Uber and WeRide launched commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi 5 months ago. Apparently, that partnership is going well, as the companies have now indicated that they plan to expand such service to 15 more cities in the next 5 years. Uber is clearly eyeing a robotaxi future. It is … [continued]
Waymo is on a roll. It keeps rolling into new markets. It keeps proving that its robotaxis are safer than human drivers. And now it’s also scaling up via US manufacturing and its partnership with Uber, which is going very well. Waymo announced this week that it is now providing … [continued]
Along with Waymo’s expansion into Tokyo, Japan, the company is continuing its robotaxi rollout in major US cities. It recently announced it was coming to Washington, DC, and more recently (this week), Waymo and Uber started letting residents join an “interest list” to use the robotaxi service in Atlanta, Georgia. … [continued]
Ammar has been driving a BYD Atto 3 as an Uber for the past 22 months. During that time, he has put over 150,000 km (93,000 miles) on his odometer. He mainly drives around the Gold Coast (Queensland) and sometimes in northern New South Wales. He tells me that traffic … [continued]
There’s been a lot going on in the advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) industry in the past couple of weeks. BYD has announced it’s including advanced driver-assist systems in all of its new models for free. Several Chinese automakers are partnering with DeepSeek, which may well have an autonomous driving component … [continued]
Much of the discussion around robotaxis these days is focused on how well they work and how quickly they can scale up and reproduce. However, some of the initial premises on why robotaxis could be good and helpful have probably not gotten enough attention. Bloomberg recently interviewed former director of … [continued]
I just wrote about interesting new research finding that 25% of Americans are completely avoiding Tesla products because of Elon Musk. It’s a big deal, whether many Tesla fans want to acknowledge it or not. In theory, that’s 1.5 million sales rather than 2 million. But that’s not what most … [continued]
Having gone to Abu Dhabi several times for cleantech conferences, I could see that UAE leaders were very keen on futuristic tech and very keen on superlatives — the biggest, the first, the tallest, the fastest, etc. So, I knew it would be quick to deploy robotaxis. Today, the capital … [continued]
Waymo continues to be out in front as a clear robotaxi leader. Today, the news from the company is that it has raised another $5.6 billion. That will carry the company quite far. Furthermore, the latest financing round was oversubscribed. The investment round was led by Alphabet, and included participation … [continued]
Regular crashes, injuries, and even fatalities plague the traffic sector, highlighting the potential benefits of self-driving cars. When my daughters and I decided to take a Waymo to get to the museum across the city from us in San Francisco, we had no idea how safe we would or wouldn’t … [continued]
