Chinese electric vehicles are basically all but banned in the United States. Nonetheless, Waymo has brought in a few thousand Zeekr-based Ojai electric robotaxis. There are 102.5% tariffs on Chinese produced EVs, including these Ojai robotaxis. However, these were custom designed for Waymo’s robotaxi service over several years. So, tariffs … [continued]
From Gen-4 heavy-duty trucks to L4 urban delivery vehicles, shared technology, automotive-grade production and industry partnerships are shaping the next phase of Pony.ai’s autonomous freight business. At a media briefing on August 3, He Xing, Vice President of Pony.ai and Head of the company’s Robotruck business, discussed how nearly a … [continued]
Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov recently gave a very interesting, 49-minute-long presentation at a Y Combinator event. A few days ago, I covered some of his comments from the beginning of the presentation. Getting further into it, this next topic had to be highlighted. In the video above, 16 minutes in, … [continued]
Silicon Valley and the tech industry are known for their “move fast and break things” mantra. This has been how the software industry has operated forever basically. In fact, the modus operandi has probably accelerated in recent years. Breaking things almost seems like the goal sometimes. Well, Waymo was spawned … [continued]
The race is on in the robotaxi industry to get into new markets, build up customer bases, and edge out the competition before they arrive — or at least at these nascent stages when no one is too massive or dominant. I just covered news of Zoox launching paid service … [continued]
Zoox has been allowed to do self-driving vehicle and robotaxi testing for a long time, but it hasn’t been allowed to charge passengers for them. Now, however, that has changed — Zoox got approval last week from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis … [continued]
The year of robotaxis moves forward, and we have another robotaxi update today. The autonomous driving firm Wayve and partner Uber were granted Private Hire Vehicle licences from Transport for London (TfL) and can now deploy robotaxis in The Swinging City. That said, they must include human supervisors onboard for … [continued]
Looking at the headline, one might think, “Wait, what? Waymo has been providing paid robotaxi rides in the US for years now.” Yes, indeed, but those vehicles have included human controls, basically being consumer cars modified to drive themselves. This is a blanket approval for the USA for vehicles that … [continued]
With Waymo news this week, we’ve got “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” First of all, the good: Waymo is now testing its Zeekr/Ojai robotaxi van thing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey, it’s a Chinese EV in the USA! Personally, I love the design of this thing, and I assume … [continued]
We’ve been writing about or mentioning Momenta a lot this week. I think this is the 4th time, and I don’t believe we’ve ever covered it before. Today we got news that Momenta has received approval from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) to do Level 4 autonomous driving testing … [continued]
