Autonomous Vehicle Technology Driverless Cars

Table Of Content

• Technology
• Waymo will launch paid robotaxi service in Los Angeles on Wednesday
• Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars
• Exclusive look at Cruise’s first driverless car without a steering wheel or pedals
• Disengagement and remote assistance
• Now in Phoenix
• The Origin is the GM subsidiary’s first attempt to build an fully autonomous car from the ground up

General Motors’ Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. The cars will be in “manual mode,” so they won’t be driving themselves. Cruise, the embattled GM self-driving car subsidiary, is laying off 900 employees, or about 24% of its workforce, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The layoffs are part of a plan to slash costs and attempt to revamp the company following an October 2 incident that left a pedestrian stuck under and then dragged by one of its robotaxis.

Technology

Prior to that incident, Cruise had been announcing launches in new cities — including Dallas, Houston and Miami — at a startling pace. Critics accused the company of expanding too fast and cutting corners on safety. Cruise is certainly one of the best capitalized autonomous vehicle companies in the world. In 2018, it secured both a $2.25 billion investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund and a $2 billion investment from Honda.

Cruise's valuation halved after its driverless car hit and dragged a woman - The Register

Cruise's valuation halved after its driverless car hit and dragged a woman.

Posted: Mon, 04 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Waymo will launch paid robotaxi service in Los Angeles on Wednesday

Last month, the company said it was starting with a Los Angeles fleet of fewer than 50 cars covering a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. After the fire truck collision, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told Cruise to reduce its fleet in half, to 150 cars, while it investigated the incident. The company says it will also work on improved engagement with first responders to facilitate trainings in each precinct it plans to operate in.

Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

The absence of all the stuff you expect to see when climbing into a vehicle is jarring. No steering wheel, no pedals, no gear shift, no cockpit to speak of, no obvious way for a human to take control should anything go wrong. Since becoming part of General Motors in March 2016,[17] Cruise has been working on developing software and hardware to make fully autonomous vehicles using modified Chevrolet Bolts. A police news release on the crash says a criminal investigation is under way and a charge of homicide by motor vehicle while driving under the influence is possible against the 23-year-old woman driving the Mach E.

For GM, that includes slashing spending at Cruise “by hundreds of millions of dollars” in 2024, an action that most expected would result in widespread layoffs. The layoffs come just a day after nine senior leaders (SLT) at Cruise, who worked in its commercial operations, legal and policy departments, were dismissed by the company’s board. COO Gil West and David Estrada, who was head of government affairs, were among that group.

Disengagement and remote assistance

Sensors can see 360 degrees, hundreds of feet ahead, and around that double-parked car. Cruise cars make sense of this data in a split second, tracking every important object in view.

Now in Phoenix

The service works similarly to other ride-hailing smartphone apps such as Flywheel, Lyft and Uber, except that Waymo’s vehicles have no human drivers present. Riders follow instructions on the app and through the vehicle’s sound system, though Waymo workers can assist remotely. Cruise and Waymo also ran into problems with San Francisco's police and fire departments. At government hearings, the agencies testified that the driverless cars were a nuisance. They tallied nearly 75 incidents where self-driving cars got in the way of rescue operations, including driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders. A year ago, the future seemed bright for the driverless car startup Cruise.

The Origin is the GM subsidiary’s first attempt to build an fully autonomous car from the ground up

But Voyage doesn’t want to be seen as the exclusive AV service for senior citizens. Ford has said it will build an autonomous car without a steering wheel or pedals by 2021, while Waymo has begun offering a limited number of rides in fully driverless minivans to its customers in Phoenix, Arizona. Cruise’s plan to test its vehicles in New York City — arguably the most difficult driving environment in the US — went nowhere. In July 2019, the company announced that it would miss its goal of launching a large-scale self-driving taxi service by the end of the year. It tried to sugarcoat the disappointing news by announcing a plan to dramatically increase the number of its test vehicles on the road in San Francisco. We’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel.

Rider FAQs

Supporters of robotaxis have countered that human drivers have a terrible safety record, with traffic deaths topping 40,000 a year in the U.S. Waymo has not reported a death or serious injury from its technology, and Waymo vehicles appear to be generally more observant of traffic laws than human drivers are, according to journalists who have ridden in them. Robotaxis are getting more buzz as the technology advances in fits and starts. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Friday that Tesla would reveal a robotaxi product in August, though he gave no details. Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August.

So I think that one way or another, we are going to make some version of this standard for many of us in the not-far-off future. Various China-based tech startups are also testing self-driving cars on California roads, drawing scrutiny from lawmakers. Waymo, a spinoff of Google, had announced details for its service in Los Angeles in January as it sought state regulatory approval and local support. GM recently paused production of the Origin, a fully autonomous van designed for Cruise to carry multiple passengers. The company is expected to resume production at a Detroit-area factory once Cruise resumes autonomous ride-hailing.

So now three Waymos were sitting there, blocking traffic and waiting for the light. The traffic cop stopped trying to move us and just held his hands over his head in disgust. “The reception from Angelenos so far has been exceptional, and we look forward to welcoming more riders into our service over time,” he said in a statement. Cruise says it gave regulators the entire video immediately after the incident.