ReportWire

Tag: self-driving cars

  • Biden administration seeks to ban Chinese, Russian tech in US autonomous vehicles

    Biden administration seeks to ban Chinese, Russian tech in US autonomous vehicles

    NEW YORK (AP) — The Commerce Department said Monday it’s seeking a ban on the sale of connected and autonomous vehicles in the U.S. that are equipped with Chinese and Russian software and hardware with the stated goal of protecting national security and U.S. drivers.

    While there is minimal Chinese and Russian software deployed in the U.S, the issue is more complicated for hardware. There are more Chinese parts on U.S. vehicles than software, and software can be changed much faster than physical parts.

    Replacing hardware also could require complex engineering and assembly line changes. That’s why Commerce officials said the prohibitions on the software would take effect for the 2027 model year and the prohibitions on hardware would take effect for the model year of 2030, or Jan. 1, 2029, for units without a model year.

    The measure announced Monday is proactive but critical, the agency said, given that all the bells and whistles in cars like microphones, cameras, GPS tracking and Bluetooth technology could make Americans more vulnerable to bad actors and potentially expose personal information, from the home address of drivers, to where their children go to school.

    In extreme situations, a foreign adversary could shut down or take simultaneous control of multiple vehicles operating in the United States, causing crashes and blocking roads, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters on a call Sunday.

    “This is not about trade or economic advantage,” Raimondo said. “This is a strictly national security action. The good news is right now, we don’t have many Chinese or Russian cars on our road.”

    But Raimondo said Europe and other regions in the world where Chinese vehicles have become commonplace very quickly should serve as “a cautionary tale” for the U.S.

    Security concerns around the extensive software-driven functions in Chinese vehicles have arisen in Europe, where Chinese electric cars have rapidly gained market share.

    Imported Chinese-owned vehicle brands had 7.6% of the market for electric vehicles in Europe in 2023, more than doubling from 2.9% in 2020, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. The share of all electric vehicles imported from China is still higher when Western-owned brands manufactured in China, such as BMW and Tesla are included: some 21.7%.

    “Who controls these data flows and software updates is a far from trivial question, the answers to which encroach on matters of national security, cybersecurity, and individual privacy,” Janka Oertel, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the council’s website.

    Vehicles are now “mobility platforms” that monitor driver and passenger behavior and track their surroundings.

    A senior administration official said that it is clear from terms of service contracts included with the technology that data from vehicles ends up in China.

    Raimondo said that the U.S. won’t wait until its roads are populated with Chinese or Russian cars.

    “We’re issuing a proposed rule to address these new national security threats before suppliers, automakers and car components linked to China or Russia become commonplace and widespread in the U.S. automotive sector,” Raimondo said.

    It is difficult to know when China could reach that level of saturation, a senior adminstration official said, but the Commerce Department says China hopes to enter the U.S. market and several Chinese companies have already announced plans to enter the automotive software space.

    The Commerce Department added Russia to the regulations since the country is trying to “breathe new life into its auto industry,” senior administration officials said on the call.

    The proposed rule would prohibit the import and sale of vehicles with Russia and China-manufactured software and hardware that would allow the vehicle to communicate externally through Bluetooth, cellular, satellite or Wi-Fi modules. It would also prohibit the sale or import of software components made in Russia or the People’s Republic of China that collectively allow a highly autonomous vehicle to operate without a driver behind the wheel. The ban would include vehicles made in the U.S. using Chinese and Russian technology.

    The proposed rule would apply to all vehicles, but would exclude those not used on public roads, such as agricultural or mining vehicles.

    U.S. automakers said they share the government’s national security goal, but at present there is little connected vehicle hardware or software coming to the U.S. supply chain from China.

    Yet the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a large industry group, said the new rules will make some automakers scramble for new parts suppliers. “You can’t just flip a switch and change the world’s most complex supply chain overnight,” John Bozzella, the alliance’s CEO, said in a statement.

    The lead time in the new rules will be long enough for some automakers to make the changes, “but may be too short for others,” Bozzella said.

    Commerce officials met with all the major auto companies around the world while it drafted the proposed rule to better understand supply chain networks, according to senior administration officials, and also met with a variety of industry associations.

    The Commerce Department is inviting public comments, which are due 30 days after publication of a rule before it’s finalized. That should happen by the end of the Biden Administration.

    The new rule follows steps taken earlier this month by the Biden administration to crack down on cheap products sold out of China, including electric vehicles, expanding a push to reduce U.S. dependence on Beijing and bolster homegrown industry.

    _____

    AP Business Writers David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

    Source link

  • Waymo Is Picking Up at the Airport. That’s a Big Deal

    Waymo Is Picking Up at the Airport. That’s a Big Deal

    On Tuesday, Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle developer Waymo said it would begin operating all-day, curbside pickups and drop-offs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona. The announcement came with little fanfare—a post on X. But it signals that after years of delay, self-driving vehicles might be (literally) moving in the right direction.

    The new curbside airport service sends a good signal about Waymo’s business, says Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst with Gartner. “The airport is the primary destination and departure point for any sort of mobility service, whether it’s a cab, shuttle bus—or an autonomous robocab,” he says. Almost a decade ago, then-upstarts Uber and Lyft fought hard to gain access to airports. Less price-sensitive business travelers, families lugging bags, and anyone who doesn’t want to spend money to park at the airport all want easy-to-access rides, making it an ideal place to base a taxi service.

    Even before all-day curbside service began, the airport was Waymo’s most popular destination in Phoenix, says Brad Gillette, Waymo’s market lead in the city. Waymo has operated self-driving vehicles in Arizona since 2017, and began offering rides to Phoenix’s airport at the end of 2022. For the first year of service, passengers could only get picked up and dropped off from the stations along the airport’s “Sky Train”—areas with less intense traffic. Late last year, Waymo began to offer nighttime curbside service between 10 pm and 6 am, also periods in which the airport was less hectic. Now, the service is open anytime, to anyone who downloads the company’s Waymo One app.

    The company says it has served nearly 100,000 rides to and from the airport since it first started its station service nearly two years ago, and is now serving thousands of travelers per week.

    The airport departures and arrivals curbs are also a really difficult place to drive. Cars pulling in and out, hunting for passengers, operating in tight spaces—this sort of thing is hard enough for a human. Gillette says it took Waymo a year of testing to ensure the company’s technology “can predict and react appropriately, with a certain level of assertiveness, in order to pull into the right place at the right time.”

    Waymos will pick up and drop off from designated terminal rideshare and electric vehicle pickup areas, Eric Everts, a public information officer for the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, said in an email. Through Waymo’s app, passengers will be given specific dwell times to load into vehicles, and the cars will leave them behind if they don’t hit the deadline, Everts wrote—implying that traffic cops won’t have to hassle the driverless vehicles to move along.

    Bumpy Ride

    Last summer, curbside pickup and drop-off became a point of contention as Waymo and competitor Cruise both applied to begin full-time paid passenger robotaxi service in San Francisco—to, basically, officially take on Uber and Lyft in the city where those services were born. In letters to the regulator overseeing the permitting, the city of San Francisco said it was concerned that robotaxis weren’t pulling close enough to curbs to pick up and drop off passengers.

    For California regulators, who control autonomous vehicle operations in the state, the concern wasn’t much of a sticking point: A commission approved the permits in August 2023. (Cruise has since had its permit to operate rides in the state revoked, after state officials alleged the company concealed details of an incident in which an autonomous vehicle dragged a pedestrian some 20 feet.) But for some city officials and residents, robotaxis’ behavior at the curb was enough to say, no thanks.

    Aarian Marshall

    Source link

  • Cruise will dispatch some of its trouble-ridden robotaxis to join Uber’s ride-hailing service

    Cruise will dispatch some of its trouble-ridden robotaxis to join Uber’s ride-hailing service

    Cruise’s trouble-ridden robotaxis are joining Uber’s ride-hailing service next year as part of a multiyear partnership bringing together two companies that once appeared poised to compete for passengers.

    The alliance is the latest change in direction for Cruise since its California license to provide driverless rides was suspended in October 2023 after one of its robotaxis dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven vehicle across a darkened San Francisco street.

    The incident spurred regulatory inquiries into Cruise and prompted its corporate parent, automaker General Motors, to tamp down its once audacious ambitions in autonomous driving.

    GM had envisioned Cruise generating $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025 as its robotaxis steadily expanded beyond San Francisco and into other cities to offer a driverless alternative to the ride-hailing services operated by Uber and Lyft.

    But now GM and Cruise are looking to make money by mixing the robotaxis with Uber’s human-driven cars, giving passengers the option to ask for an autonomous ride if they want. The financial details of the partnership weren’t disclosed, nor were the cities in which Uber intends to offer Cruise’s robotaxis next year.

    Unless something changes, California won’t be in the mix of options because Cruise’s license remains suspended in the state.

    Meanwhile, a robotaxi fleet operated by Google spinoff Waymo is expanding beyond San Francisco into cities around the Bay Area and Southern California. Earlier this week, Waymo announced its robotaxis are completing more than 100,000 paid rides per week — a number that includes its operations in Phoenix, where it has been operating for several years.

    Cruise is currently operating Chevy Bolts autonomously in Phoenix and Dallas, with humans sitting behind the wheel ready to take over if something goes wrong. The Uber deal underscores Cruise’s determination to get back to the point where its robotaxis navigate the roads entirely on their own.

    “Cruise is on a mission to leverage driverless technology to create safer streets and redefine urban life,” said Cruise CEO Marc Whitten, who is filling a void created after Cruise founder Kyle Vogt stepped down in the fallout from the California license suspension.

    GM also laid off hundreds of employees in the California blowback as part of its financial belt-tightening after sustaining $5.8 billion in losses on the robotaxi service from 2021 to 2023. The Detroit automaker sustained another operating loss of $900 million on Cruise during the first half of this year, but that was down from nearly $1.2 billion at the same point last year.

    Despite Cruise’s recent woes, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed confidence the ride-hailing service could get the robotaxis back on the right track.

    “We believe Uber can play an important role in helping to safely and reliably introduce autonomous technology to consumers and cities around the world,” Khosrowshahi said.

    Source link

  • Japan rivals Nissan and Honda will share EV components and AI research as they play catch up

    Japan rivals Nissan and Honda will share EV components and AI research as they play catch up

    TOKYO — Japanese automakers Nissan and Honda say they plan to share components for electric vehicles like batteries and jointly research software for autonomous driving.

    A third Japanese manufacturer, Mitsubishi Motors Corp., has joined the Nissan-Honda partnership, sharing the view that speed and size are crucial in responding to dramatic changes in the auto industry centered around electrification.

    A preliminary agreement between Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. was announced in March.

    After 100 days of talks, executives of the companies evinced a sense of urgency. Japanese automakers dominated the era of gasoline engines in recent decades but have fallen behind formidable new players in green cars like Tesla of the U.S. and China’s BYD.

    “Companies that don’t adapt to the changes cannot survive,” said Honda Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe. “If we try to do everything on our own, we cannot catch up.”

    Nissan and Honda will use the same batteries and adopt the same specifications for motors and inverters for EV axels, they said.

    By coming together in what Mibe and counterpart at Nissan, Makoto Uchida, repeatedly called “making friends” to achieve economies of scale, the companies plan more strategic investments in technology and aim to cut costs by boosting volume.

    Each company will continue to produce and offer its own model offerings. But they will share resources in areas like components and software development, where “making friends” will be a plus, Mibe and Uchida told reporters.

    They declined to say whether the friendship will extend to a mutual capital ownership, while noting that wasn’t ruled out.

    The two companies also agreed to have their model lineups “mutually complement” each other in various global markets, including both internal combustion engine vehicles and EVs. Details on that are being worked out, the companies said.

    Honda and Nissan will also work together on energy services in Japan. Under Thursday’s announcements, Mitsubishi will join as a third member.

    Toyota Motor Corp., Japan’s top automaker, is not part of the three-way collaboration.

    Although Honda and Nissan have very different corporate cultures, it became clear, as their discussions on working together continued, their engineers and other workers on the ground have a lot in common, Uchida said.

    “Speed is the most crucial element, considering our size,” he added.

    Uchida and Mibe repeatedly stressed speed, openly admitting BYD is moving very quickly, but they said there was still time to catch up and remain in the game.

    “In coming together, we will show that one plus one will add up to become more than two,” Uchida said.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    Source link

  • A driverless car hits a person crossing against the light in China

    A driverless car hits a person crossing against the light in China

    A driverless ride-hailing car in China hit a pedestrian, and people on social media are taking the carmaker’s side, because the person was reportedly crossing against the light

    BEIJING — A driverless ride-hailing car in China hit a pedestrian, and people on social media are taking the carmaker’s side, because the person was reportedly crossing against the light.

    The operator of the vehicle, Chinese tech giant Baidu, said in a statement to Chinese media that the car began moving when the light turned green and had minor contact with the pedestrian. The person was taken to a hospital where an examination found no obvious external injuries, Baidu said.

    The incident on Sunday in the city of Wuhan highlights the challenge that autonomous driving faces in complex situations, the Chinese financial news outlet Yicai said. It quoted an expert saying the technology may have limitations when dealing with unconventional behavior such as other vehicles or pedestrians that violate traffic laws.

    Images posted online show a person sitting on the street in front of the driverless car with its rooftop sensors. Comments on social media largely supported Baidu, pointing out that the pedestrian had broken the law, the English-language Shanghai Daily newspaper said in a post on X.

    Beijing-based search-engine and artificial intelligence company Baidu is a leader in the development of autonomous driving in China. Its largest “robotaxi” operation, with a fleet of 300 cars, is in Wuhan, a major city in central China that had the world’s first major outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020.

    Apollo Go, as the ride-hailing service is called, also operates in more limited parts of three other Chinese cities — Beijing, Shenzhen and Chongqing. The company launched the sixth-generation of its driverless taxi in May, saying it had brought the unit cost down by more than half to under $30,000.

    Source link

  • Waymo recalls more than 600 self-driving vehicles for software, map updates after one strikes a pole

    Waymo recalls more than 600 self-driving vehicles for software, map updates after one strikes a pole

    FILE 0 A Waymo self-driving vehicle sits curbside, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022, at the Sky Harbor International Airport Sky Train facility in Phoenix. Waymo is recalling more than 600 self-driving vehicles after one of them struck a telephone pole in Arizona. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in its report that last month a driverless Waymo vehicle hit a wooden utility pole in Phoenix while it was in an alleyway and trying to perform a low-speed pullover maneuver. There were no passengers, other road users, or injuries associated with the event, the report said. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

    Source link

  • From decay to dazzling. Ford restores grandeur to former eyesore Detroit train station

    From decay to dazzling. Ford restores grandeur to former eyesore Detroit train station

    DETROIT — The once-blighted monolithic Michigan Central train station — for decades a symbol of Detroit’s decline — has new life following a massive six-year, multimillion-dollar renovation to create a hub for mobility projects in the rebirth of the Motor City.

    The windowless hulking scavenger-ravaged structure that ominously shadowed the city’s Corktown neighborhood is now home to Ford Motor Co. and the centerpiece of a sprawling 30-acre (12-hectare) mobility innovation district.

    The building’s first tenant, Google’s Code Next Detroit computer science education program, is expected to move in by late June. Grand opening ceremonies include an outdoor concert on Thursday, with tours for the public starting Friday.

    “The train station … it is perhaps the most powerful story in Michigan of the power of historic renovation,” Detroit Regional Chamber President and Chief Executive Sandy Baruah said. “To turn something that was blight into something that is hugely attractive and is an anchor as opposed to a deficit is huge.”

    The restoration effort — part of the automaker’s more than $900 million project to create a place where new transportation and mobility ideas are nurtured and developed — was just as massive as the size of the more than century-old, 500,000-square-foot (46,000-square-meter) building.

    In numbers:

    __ More than 3,100 workers spent about 1.7 million hours of labor on the station and its surrounding public spaces

    __ 29,000 Gustavino tiles were restored in its Grand Hall

    __ 8.6 million miles (13.8 million kilometers) of new grout was laid across the 21,000-square-foot (1,951 square-meter) ceiling

    __ 8 million bricks, 23,000 square feet (2,138 square meters) of marble flooring and 90,000 square feet (8,361 square meters) of decorative plaster were restored or replicated

    __ 3.5 million gallons (13.2 million liters) of water was pumped from the basement

    __ Installation of 300 miles (482 kilometers) of electrical cable and wiring and 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) of plumbing

    The train station’s history reflects the city’s fortunes during its heyday as the world’s car capital and later misfortunes as thousands of auto workers and other residents fled Detroit for life in the suburbs.

    Michigan Central Railroad started purchasing land around 1908 in Corktown, the city’s oldest neighborhood, for the new train station, according to HistoricDetroit.org. The depot opened in late 1913. But as traveling by train gave way to commuter air travel and as more Americans chose to use the nation’s interstates, the numbers of people coming through Michigan Central steadily dropped.

    The last train pulled out in 1988 and for years after the building fell into disrepair, neglect and abandonment. It became a destination for the curious and urban adventurers seeking out such places. Other buildings in Detroit, particularly factories, suffered the same or similar fate, but due to Michigan Central’s size it became a symbol of the city’s decline.

    Redevelopment by its former owner never materialized. Then in 2018, Ford announced it was buying the 18-story building and adjacent structures as part of its plans for a more than 1 million square foot campus focusing on autonomous vehicles.

    “There’s a lot of innovation going on here,” said Jim Farley, Ford chief executive. “Very much the future of the company is going to be housed here and on the campus. It represents our future revenues.”

    It also was the vision of Bill Ford, company executive chair and great-grandson of its legendary founder Henry Ford, that a revamped Michigan Central would be something for the community to enjoy, he added.

    “And as employees, we’re so proud that Ford stuck its neck out to do this project,” Farley said.

    The project is expected to bring with it thousands of tech-related jobs. Restaurants, new hotels and other service-industry businesses already are moving into and near Corktown.

    In December, state officials announced three proposed housing development efforts intended to meet housing needs around Michigan Central and the innovation district.

    Michigan Central and several other efforts around Detroit are expected to accelerate southeastern Michigan’s innovation economy, said Baruah, who added that the building and the surrounding campus will help draw the best and most innovative minds to the area.

    “It’s really an attraction play. It’s about talent,” he said.

    The reopening of the train station also comes as Detroit apparently has turned the corner from national joke to national attraction. Nearly a decade from exiting its embarrassing bankruptcy, the motor city has stabilized its finances, improved city services, staunched the population losses that saw more than a million people leave since the 1950s, and made inroads in cleaning up blight across its 139 square miles.

    Detroit now is a destination for conventions and meetings. Last month, Detroit set an attendance record for the NFL draft after more than 775,000 fans poured into downtown last month for the three-day event.

    The significance of Michigan Central’s rebirth is not lost on Mayor Mike Duggan, whose administration has guided Detroit back to respectability since the city’s 2014 exit from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

    “I’ve been waiting 40 years for this day and so have all long-time to Detroiters, so it’s going to be very special,” Duggan said last week. “It’ll be a very emotional day.”

    “The abandoned train station was the national symbol of Detroit’s decline and bankruptcy,” he explained. “It was on the cover of Time magazine under the headline ‘bankruptcy.’ So the fact that not only has the city come back, but that the train station has come back in such a spectacular way and the place where we’re going to be designing the automobiles of the future. It’s now about the future, not about the past.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporter Joey Cappelletti on Mackinac Island, Michigan, contributed to this story.

    Source link

  • Red, yellow, green … and white? Smarter vehicles could mean big changes for the traffic light

    Red, yellow, green … and white? Smarter vehicles could mean big changes for the traffic light

    As cars and trucks get smarter and more connected, the humble lights that have controlled the flow of traffic for more than a century could also be on the cusp of a major transformation.

    Researchers are exploring ways to use features in modern cars, such as GPS, to make traffic safer and more efficient. Eventually, the upgrades could do away entirely with the red, yellow and green lights of today, ceding control to driverless cars.

    Henry Liu, a civil engineering professor who is leading a study through the University of Michigan, said the rollout of a new traffic signal system could be a lot closer than people realize.

    “The pace of artificial intelligence progress is very fast, and I think it’s coming,” he said.

    Traffic lights haven’t changed much in the U.S. over the years. Cleveland debuted what is considered the first “municipal traffic control system” in 1914, historian Megan Kate Nelson wrote for Smithsonian Magazine. Powered by the electricity from the city’s trolley line, engineer James Hodge’s invention featured two lights: red and green, the colors long used by railroads. A police officer sitting in a booth on the sidewalk had to flip a switch to change the signal.

    A few years later, Detroit police officer William Potts is credited with adding the yellow light, though as a city employee he couldn’t patent it. By 1930, Nelson wrote, all major American cities and many smaller ones had at least one electrical traffic signal.

    The advent of connected and automated vehicles, though, has presented a world of new possibilities for traffic signals.

    Among those reimagining traffic flows is a team at North Carolina State University led by Ali Hajbabaie, an associate engineering professor. Rather than doing away with today’s traffic signals, Hajbabaie suggests adding a fourth light, perhaps a white one, to indicate when there are enough autonomous vehicles on the road to take charge and lead the way.

    “When we get to the intersection, we stop if it’s red and we go if it’s green,” said Hajbabaie, whose team used model cars small enough to hold. “But if the white light is active, you just follow the vehicle in front of you.”

    Although Hajbabaie’s research refers to a “white phase” and possibly even a white light, the specific color isn’t important, he said. Current lights could even suffice, say, by modifying them to flash red and green simultaneously to signal that driverless cars are in charge. The key would be making sure that it’s universally adopted like the current signals are.

    Using such an approach would be years away, as it would require 40% to 50% of vehicles on the road to be self-driving in order to work, Hajbabaie acknowledged.

    Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp pointed out that the self-driving car subsidiary of Google’s parent company launched a fully autonomous ride-sharing service in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, even without the addition of a fourth traffic light.

    “While it is good at this early stage of AV development that people are thinking creatively about how to facilitate the safe deployment of safe AVs, policymakers and infrastructure owners should be careful about jumping too soon on AV-specific investments that may turn out to be premature or even unnecessary,” Karp said in an email to The Associated Press.

    University of Michigan researchers have taken a different approach. They conducted a pilot program in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham using insights from the speed and location data found in General Motors vehicles to alter the timing of that city’s traffic lights. The researchers recently landed a U.S. Department of Transportation grant under the bipartisan infrastructure law to test how to make the changes in real time.

    Because the Michigan research deals with vehicles that have drivers, not fully autonomous ones, it could be much closer to wider implementation than what Hajbabaie is seeking.

    Liu, who has been leading the Michigan research, said even with as little as 6% of the vehicles on Birmingham’s streets connected to the GM system, they provide enough data to adjust the timing of the traffic lights to smooth the flow.

    The 34 traffic signals in Birmingham were chosen because, like more than half of the signals nationwide, they’re set to a fixed-time schedule without any cameras or sensors to monitor congestion. Liu said although there are higher-tech solutions to monitoring traffic, they require cities to make complex and expensive upgrades.

    “The beauty of this is you don’t have to do anything to the infrastructure,” Liu said. “The data is not coming from the infrastructure. It’s coming from the car companies.”

    Danielle Deneau, director of traffic safety at the Road Commission in Oakland County, Michigan, said the initial data in Birmingham only adjusted the timing of green lights by a few seconds, but it was still enough to reduce congestion. Even bigger changes could be in store under the new grant-funded research, which would automate the traffic lights in a yet-to-be announced location in the county.

    Source link

  • Elon Musk Can’t Solve Tesla’s China Crisis With His Desperate Asia Visit

    Elon Musk Can’t Solve Tesla’s China Crisis With His Desperate Asia Visit

    Elon Musk will be pleased that his surprise jaunt to China on Sunday garnered many glowing headlines. The trip was undoubtedly equally a surprise to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who had been scheduled to offer Musk the red carpet on a long-arranged visit.

    The billionaire blew off India at the last minute, citing “very heavy Tesla obligations.” Indeed, Tesla has had a tumultuous couple of weeks, with federal regulator slap-downs, halved profits, and price-cut rollouts. Yet, in a very public snub that Modi won’t quickly forget, the company CEO made time for Chinese premier Li Qiang.

    And well Musk might. Tesla needs China more than China needs Tesla. After the US, China is Tesla’s second biggest market. And ominously, in the first quarter of the year, Tesla’s sales in China slipped by 4 percent in a domestic EV market that has expanded by more than 15 percent. That’s enough of a hit for any CEO to jump in a Gulfstream and fly across the Pacific for an impromptu meeting with a Chinese premier.

    Globally, Tesla has lost nearly a third of its value since January, and earlier this month, Tesla’s worldwide vehicle deliveries in the first quarter fell for the first time in almost four years. As they are wont to do, Tesla investors continue to complain over repeated delays to the company’s rollout of cars with genuine driverless capabilities.

    One of Tesla’s stop-gap technologies—a now heavily-discounted $8,000 add-on—is marketed as Full Self-Driving, or FSD. But, like the similarly confusingly named Autopilot feature, it still requires driver attention, and may yet still prove to be risky.

    Among the deals said to have been unveiled at Sunday’s meeting with Li Qiang was a partnership granting Tesla access to a mapping license for data collection on China’s public roads by web search company Baidu.

    This was a “watershed moment,” Wedbush Securities senior analyst Dan Ives said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. However, Tesla has been using Baidu for in-car mapping and navigation in China since 2020. The revised deal, in which Baidu will now also provide Tesla with its lane-level navigation system, clears one more regulatory hurdle for Tesla’s FSD in China. It does not enable Tesla to introduce driverless cars in China or anywhere else, as some media outlets have reported.

    Press reports have also claimed that Musk has secured permission to transfer data collected by Tesla cars in China out of China. This is improbable, noted JL Warren Capital CEO and head of research Junheng Li, who wrote on X: “[Baidu] owns all data, and shares filtered data with Tesla. Just imagine if [Tesla] has access to real-time road data such as who went to which country’s embassy at what time for how long.” That, she stressed, would be “super national security!”

    According to Reuters, Musk is still seeking final approval for the FSD software rollout in China, and Tesla still needs permission to transfer data overseas.

    Li added that a rollout of even a “supervised,” data-lite version of FSD in China is “extremely unlikely.” She pointed to challenges for Tesla to support local operation of the software. Tesla still “has no [direct] access to map data in China as a foreign entity,” she wrote.

    Instead, Tesla is likely using the deal extension with Baidu as an FSD workaround, with the data collected in China very much staying in China. Despite this, Tesla shares have jumped following news of the expanded Baidu collaboration.

    Furthermore, Li said there’s “no strategic value” for Beijing to favor FSD when there are several more advanced Chinese alternatives. (We’ve tested them.)

    “Chinese EVs are simply evolving at a far faster pace than Tesla,” agrees Shanghai-based automotive journalist and WIRED contributor Mark Andrews, who tested the driver assistance tech available on the roads in China. The US-listed trio of Xpeng, Nio, and Li Auto offer better-than-Tesla “driving assistance features” that rely heavily on lidar sensors, a technology that Musk previously dismissed, but which Tesla is now said to be testing.

    Although dated in shape and lacking in the latest tech, a Tesla car is nevertheless more expensive in China than most of its rivals. Tesla recently slashed prices in China to arrest falling sales.

    Musk’s flying visit to China smacked of “desperation,” says Mark Rainford, owner of the Inside China Auto channel. “[Tesla] sales are down in China—the competition has weathered the price cuts so far and [the Tesla competitors have] a seemingly endless conveyor belt of talented and beautiful products.” Rainford further warns that the “golden period for Tesla in China” is “at great risk of collapsing.”

    Tesla opened its first gigafactory in Shanghai five years ago, and it is now the firm’s largest—but the automaker has been playing tech catchup in China for some time. In addition to Xpeng, Nio, and Li, there are other Chinese car companies competing with Tesla on autonomous driving, as Musk will see if he visits the Beijing Motor Show, which runs through this week.

    Beijing is now arguably the world’s preeminent automotive expo, but Tesla is not exhibiting—a sign that it has little new to offer famously tech-hungry Chinese autobuyers. Pointedly, the Cybertruck is not road-legal in China, although that hasn’t stopped Tesla from displaying the rust-prone electric pickup in some of its Chinese showrooms.

    Likewise, Tesla has just announced plans for a European Cybertruck tour. But, just like in China, the EV pickup cannot be sold in the EU, either—and according to Tesla’s lead on vehicle engineering, it likely never will be.

    Speaking on tighter pedestrian safety regulations in the EU compared to the US, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, told Top Gear that “European regulations call for a 3.2-mm external radius on external projections. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to make a 3.2-mm radius on a 1.4-mm sheet of stainless steel.”

    The “Cybertruck Odyssey” tour—as Tesla’s European X account calls it—may titillate Tesla fans, but it could prove to be about as useful as shooting a Roadster into space.

    Carlton Reid

    Source link

  • Tesla Autopilot Was Uniquely Risky—and May Still Be

    Tesla Autopilot Was Uniquely Risky—and May Still Be

    A federal report published today found that Tesla’s Autopilot system was involved in at least 13 fatal crashes in which drivers misused the system in ways the automaker should have foreseen—and done more to prevent. Not only that, but the report called out Tesla as an “industry outlier” because its driver assistance features lacked some of the basic precautions taken by its competitors. Now regulators are questioning whether a Tesla Autopilot update designed to fix these basic design issues and prevent fatal incidents has gone far enough.

    These fatal crashes killed 14 people and injured 49, according to data collected and published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal road-safety regulator in the US.

    At least half of the 109 “frontal plane” crashes closely examined by government engineers—those in which a Tesla crashed into a vehicle or obstacle directly in its path—involved hazards visible five seconds or more before impact. That’s enough time that an attentive driver should have been able to prevent or at least avoid the worst of the impact, government engineers concluded.

    In one such crash, a March 2023 incident in North Carolina, a Model Y traveling at highway speed struck a teenager while he was exiting a school bus. The teen was airlifted to a hospital to treat his serious injuries. The NHTSA concluded that “both the bus and the pedestrian would have been visible to an attentive driver and allowed the driver to avoid or minimize the severity of this crash.”

    Government engineers wrote that, throughout their investigation, they “observed a trend of avoidable crashes involving hazards that would have been visible to an attentive driver.”

    Tesla, which disbanded its public affairs department in 2021, did not respond to a request for comment.

    Damningly, the report called Tesla “an industry outlier” in its approach to automated driving systems. Unlike other automotive companies, the report says, Tesla let Autopilot operate in situations it wasn’t designed to, and failed to pair it with a driver engagement system that required its users to pay attention to the road.

    Regulators concluded that even the Autopilot product name was a problem, encouraging drivers to rely on the system rather than collaborate with it. Automotive competitors often use “assist,” “sense,” or “team” language, the report stated, specifically because these systems aren’t designed to fully drive themselves.

    Last year, California state regulators accused Tesla of falsely advertising its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems, alleging that Tesla misled consumers into believing the cars could drive themselves. In a filing, Tesla said that the state’s failure to object to the Autopilot branding for years constituted an implicit approval of the carmaker’s advertising strategy.

    The NHTSA’s investigation also concluded that, compared to competitors’ products, Autopilot was resistant when drivers tried to steer their vehicles themselves—a design, the agency wrote in its summary of an almost two-year investigation into Autopilot, that discourages drivers from participating in the work of driving.

    A New Autopilot Probe

    These crashes occurred before Tesla recalled and updated its Autopilot software via an over-the-air update earlier this year. But along with closing this investigation, regulators have also opened a fresh probe into whether the Tesla updates, pushed in February, did enough to prevent drivers from misusing Autopilot, from misunderstanding when the feature was actually in use, or from using it in places where it is not designed to operate.

    The review comes after a Washington state driver last week said his Tesla Model S was on Autopilot—while he was using his phone—when the vehicle struck and killed a motorcyclist.

    Aarian Marshall

    Source link

  • China’s Best Self-Driving Car Platforms, Tested and Compared

    China’s Best Self-Driving Car Platforms, Tested and Compared

    I experienced the City NGP function under XNGP in a P7i in Shanghai, and later in a G6 in Guangzhou. With my second experience I soon realized it was a tale of two cities. In Shanghai it was quite smooth, and at least one of the interventions made was due to me being disoriented rather than the car. In a few other cases it was me being overly cautious.

    While in Shanghai the system appeared to cut out for no obvious reason only once or twice, this happened far more frequently in Guangzhou. One possible reason for this is that the torque in the system is unable to overcome the hand on the wheel, and so the system might think you are making an intervention. Nonetheless, in Guangzhou it got stuck behind a stopped car, and on one occasion seemed to be heading for an ebike waiting to cross the road rather than entering the road it was turning into.

    Two-wheeled traffic in Guangzhou in general seemed to present a challenge for the system. Unlike in Shanghai, the roads of Guangzhou do not have good separation between cars, bicycles and mopeds. At the best of times in China these road users are unpredictable, usually paying scant regard for traffic lights, road regulations, or their own safety. With the absence of dedicated or segregated lanes for them, XNGP seemed to struggle. But this was last year, of course, and the system may well have been significantly improved since then.

    Forward Thinking

    Moving forward, data will be the deciding factor in both the speed of change and also the capabilities of the systems, and it is here that Li might have the winning advantage. XPeng’s XNGP is available on only the Max versions of four models. In the case of Nio, all second-generation cars have the necessary hardware, but users need to pay the equivalent of $530 per month to use the system.

    In contrast, Li does not charge for its system, and all L9 and Mega cars have it as standard. For the L7 and L8, there are AD Max and AD Pro versions, with the latter missing lidar but still offering NOA Highway. Factor in that Li has sold nearly 500,000 of its second-generation cars—and in December sold 50,035 cars versus 20,115 and 18,012 for XPeng and Nio respectively—and this may help the company build leadership thanks to the sheer volume of data captured.

    However, in December, Nio unveiled its first in-house-developed autonomous driving chip, which will be in its ET9 flagship sedan coming 2025. The 5-nanometer chip, called the Shenji NX9031, has more than 50 billion transistors, supports 32-core CPUs, and is supposedly comparable to four Nvidia Drive Orin X chips.

    Fighting back in January, Li Auto announced that it will be using Nvidia’s Drive Thor autonomous driving chip in its 2025 next-gen EVs, as a successor to the Drive Orin. Drive Thor supposedly has 2,000 TOPS of performance, eight times that of Drive Orin.

    Finally, aside from such advances in chip technology and autonomous coverage rollouts in China, Asian brands will clearly not be content to stay in their home countries. Last month, XPeng, already expanding into Europe, confirmed its intentions to bring its self-driving tech worldwide in 2025. “We look forward to enabling overseas users to access XPeng’s autonomous driving already available in China,” Xiaopeng He, the firm’s founder and CEO, said.

    XPeng’s ambitions are not confined to its own cars, either. In July last year, Volkswagen announced an investment of $700 million in XPeng, purchasing a 4.99 percent stake in the company. The plan is to collaborate with XPeng to develop two VW-brand electric models for the midsize segment in the Chinese market in 2026.

    The contrast between XPeng and Apple’s now defunct Project Titan, both founded 10 years ago, could not be more stark.

    Mark Andrews

    Source link

  • California authorizes expansion of Waymo’s driverless car services to LA, SF peninsula

    California authorizes expansion of Waymo’s driverless car services to LA, SF peninsula

    SAN FRANCISCO — California regulators on Friday authorized Waymo to expand services of its fleet of robotaxis into Los Angeles and to cities on the peninsula south of San Francisco.

    The California Public Utilities Commission approved Waymo’s application for the expansion of its self-driving taxi operations beyond San Francisco starting Friday. The company owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc. has also been operating the service in Phoenix since 2020.

    In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Waymo called the commission’s approval a “vote of confidence in our operations, which paves the way for the deployment of our commercial Waymo One service in LA and the SF Peninsula.”

    Waymo’s cars have become a fairly common sight on the streets of San Francisco, although they are not universally popular and have been known to come to sudden stops that have backed up traffic in the city.

    The expansion for Waymo comes after California authorities revoked the license of a rival robotaxi service owned by General Motors after determining its driverless cars that had been transporting passengers throughout San Francisco were a dangerous menace. A robotaxi run by that company, Cruise, ran over a pedestrian who had been hit by another vehicle driven by a human, and then pinned the pedestrian under one of its tires after coming to a stop.

    Officials in San Mateo County and Los Angeles had opposed the expansion and want more local say over how robotaxis can operate.

    Source link

  • Outgoing leader says US safety agency has the people and expertise to regulate high-tech vehicles

    Outgoing leader says US safety agency has the people and expertise to regulate high-tech vehicles


    DETROIT — In the past 15 months, no one has been more responsible for safety on the nation’s roads than Ann Carlson. For much of that time she has served as acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, where she started as chief counsel in 2021.

    But on Wednesday, Carlson’s time running the agency and as its chief lawyer will come to an end. She’s returning to Los Angeles to resume teaching at the UCLA School of Law.

    During her tenure, the agency known by the acronym NHTSA has made autonomous vehicle companies and automakers report crashes involving automated systems, creating a large database.

    In an interview with The Associated Press, she talked about a recall to address safety problems with Tesla’s Autopilot partially automated driving system, the agency’s quest to get ARC Automotive Inc. to recall 52 million air bag inflators that can explode with too much force, and other issues.

    The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: Last month you pressured Tesla into recalling 2 million vehicles with Autopilot because it doesn’t make sure drivers are paying adequate attention to the road. There have been numerous crashes. Two motorcyclists were hit and killed in 2022 by Teslas apparently on Autopilot driving on freeways. How closely will NHTSA look at Tesla’s software update to fix the problem?

    A: We’ll look at everything. If you take a look at what we have made available, there are crashes both on and off highway. And they’re both of concern. We need to make sure that drivers are attentive and that they’re not assuming the system is actually sufficient to operate without driver attentiveness. One of the big messages we want to stress over and over again is that drivers need to keep paying attention, but also that a vehicle needs to be designed in a way that doesn’t lull a driver into believing that that car can take care of every situation.

    Q: Consumer Reports and others that have tested Tesla’s remedy say it increases the number of warnings that drivers get if they don’t put hands on the steering wheel. But they say steering wheel sensors aren’t enough to make sure drivers are watching, that the recall doesn’t limit Autopilot’s operation to freeways where it’s designed to work, and cameras in the cabin can be covered up so they don’t look at drivers. Does the remedy do enough to keep drivers from relying too much on the car?

    A: I can’t really comment yet on the sufficiency of the remedy. NHTSA has the authority to evaluate the remedy and ensure that it’s adequate. We have in the past sometimes required a second recall if the remedy is inadequate. The burden is on the manufacturer to remedy the unreasonable risk to safety.

    Q: The agency made an initial finding that ARC Automotive Inc. should recall 52 million air bag inflators because they can explode and hurl shrapnel. The company doesn’t want to do the recall, and several automakers are opposing it. You’ve held a public hearing, and the next step could be seeking a court order. What’s the status of that?

    A: It is very unusual for us to be in a position where we hold a public hearing. The purpose is for us to take evidence and then to make a determination about whether our initial finding is, in fact, correct. The public comment period closed. We’re in the process of evaluating those comments.

    Q: Are you confident that NHTSA has the right people in place to evaluate automobile software? Critics say the agency lacks expertise compared with car companies.

    A: I’m highly confident in the NHTSA team. Some of the recalls that we’ve engaged in recently are evidence of that. It is true that vehicles are increasingly sophisticated. They’re essentially computers on wheels. We’ve really benefited from the bipartisan infrastructure law, which infused a lot of new resources into NHTSA. I started in January of 2021. We’ve increased our hiring by about 150 people. So the agency is devoting a lot of resources to questions of automation. We have a new Office of Automation Safety. We have these incredibly sophisticated interdisciplinary teams. It does not just take software expertise. It also takes engineering expertise. It takes legal expertise to make sure that we are conducting our oversight in a way that is consistent with our statutory authority and our regulations.

    Q: We’ve seen the issues with Tesla, and now there are problems with General Motors’ Cruise automated vehicle s. Are federal standards needed to make sure self-driving vehicles are safe?

    A: NHTSA has authority to issue vehicle safety standards. But we also need to do it in a way that actually recognizes the rapidity of change and technology. We have a standing general order that requires pretty immediate reporting of crashes. We act immediately if we know that there’s a problem. We’re also considering a new program called AV step. That would combine the opportunity for manufacturers to deploy automated vehicles with a process that would allow NHTSA significant access to information about redundancy and safety systems,

    Q: Roadway deaths are starting to go down after rising since the pandemic. Are you confident that will continue?

    A: A real lesson about traffic fatalities is that there is no single answer to drive them down. We need to do everything we can. That means we need safer people, we need safer vehicles, we need safer speeds, we need safer roads, and we need improvements in post-crash care. All of those things are crucial to driving fatalities down, and we are using every tool we have to try to do so.



    Source link

  • Waymo will start testing robotaxis on Phoenix highways | TechCrunch

    Waymo will start testing robotaxis on Phoenix highways | TechCrunch

    Waymo is about to start testing its driverless passenger vehicles on the highway later this month, a critical milestone for the company that, if successful, will unlock expanded commercial operations. 

    The company said Monday that its autonomous Jaguar I-Pace SUVs will begin shuttling employees around the freeways in Phoenix, Arizona in just a few weeks, after having spent much of the last year doing testing with an operator behind the wheel. Driverless highway service will eventually expand to regular customers, the company says, though it didn’t offer a timeline for when that will become available.

    Bringing its autonomous cars to the highway is just the latest in a series of big steps for Waymo, especially in the Phoenix area. In December, the company started offering curbside dropoff and pickup at the Phoenix airport. Just a few months before that, Waymo made its autonomous vehicles available in the Uber app.

    These moves have come as Waymo’s competition has struggled to keep up, namely Cruise. The GM autonomous vehicle subsidiary recently slashed a quarter of its staff and pushed out a number of executives after a crash in October where one of its robotaxis dragged a pedestrian.

    Waymo’s progress hasn’t happened in a perfectly straight line. Last year, the company backed away from its autonomous trucking effort in order to focus more on ride-hailing. The company said Monday that what it learned from the voluminous testing that went into the trucking project, much of which happened in Arizona, is helping it take this step toward fully launching its passenger vehicle program on highways.

    Sean O’Kane

    Source link

  • GM's Cruise robotaxi unit lays off 900 workers with investigation into San Francisco crash ongoing

    GM's Cruise robotaxi unit lays off 900 workers with investigation into San Francisco crash ongoing

    NEW YORK — General Motors’ troubled Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is cutting over 900 jobs, about a quarter of its workforce, as it moves to reduce costs and remake itself after a series of safety problems in San Francisco.

    The subsidiary announced the cuts Thursday in a letter to Cruise’s 3,800 workers from President and Chief Technical Officer Mo ElShenawy, who wrote that the layoffs are not the fault of the workers.

    The job cuts come a day after Cruise confirmed that nine key leaders are no longer with the company amid an ongoing investigation into an October crash involving one of its driverless robotaxis that forced it to suspend operations.

    “We are simplifying and focusing our efforts to return with an exceptional service in one city to start with,” ElShenawy wrote. “As a result of our decision to slow down commercialization, we are restructuring to focus on delivering the improvements to our tech and vehicle performance that will build trust in our AVs (autonomous vehicles),” the letter said.

    The employment actions come following an initial analysis of the Oct. 2 crash and the company response after a Cruise robotaxi ran over and injured a pedestrian who had been hit by another vehicle driven by a human. The Cruise vehicle then dragged the pedestrian to the side of the road.

    California regulators have alleged that Cruise covered up the severity of the October crash — which could result in a potential penalty of roughly $1.5 million. The robotaxi service is also being investigated by U.S. auto safety regulators after separately receiving reports of potential risks to pedestrians and passengers.

    Employees were to be notified if by email Thursday if they have been let go. The letter said they would stay on the payroll through Feb. 12 and are eligible for another eight weeks of pay. Long term employees will get another two weeks of pay for every year at the company over three years, the letter said.

    “This is one of the hardest days we’ve had so far because so many talented people are leaving,” ElShenawy wrote.

    The executive departures included leaders in from legal, government affairs, commercial operations and safety and systems teams, Cruise said. The announcements come just weeks after Kyle Vogt resigned as Cruise’s CEO.

    Cruise has faced significant turmoil over recent months. Weeks following the October mishap, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles effectively shut down the robotaxi service by suspending its license to operate in the state.

    Cruise announced it would be pausing driverless operations for a review by independent experts and later recalled all 950 of its cars to update software.

    General Motors has absorbed huge losses during the development of the driverless service that was supposed to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2025, with plans to expand beyond San Francisco.

    GM plans a slowdown in spending at Cruise, which it bought eight years ago. During the first nine months of this year Cruise posted pretax losses of $1.9 billion.

    Source link

  • GM's Cruise robotaxi service faces fine in alleged cover-up of San Francisco accident's severity

    GM's Cruise robotaxi service faces fine in alleged cover-up of San Francisco accident's severity

    California regulators are alleging a San Francisco robotaxi service owned by General Motors covered up the severity of an accident involving one of its driverless cars, raising the specter they may add a fine to the recent suspension of its California license.

    The potential penalty facing GM’s Cruise service could be around $1.5 million, based on documents filed late last week by the California Public Utilities Commission.

    The notice orders Cruise to appear at a Feb. 6 evidentiary hearing to determine whether the robotaxi service misled regulators about what happened after one of its driverless cars ran into a pedestrian who had already been struck by another vehicle driven by a human on the evening of Oct. 2 in San Francisco.

    The February hearing comes just six months after the commission authorized Cruise’s robotaxi service to begin charging passengers for around-the-clock rides throughout San Francisco despite strident objections from city officials who warned the driverless cars malfunctioned.

    Three weeks after Cruise’s Oct. 2 accident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles effectively shut down the robotaxi service by suspending its license to operate in the state.

    The suspension was a major blow for Cruise and its corporate parent GM, which absorbed huge losses during the development of the driverless service that was supposed to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2025 as it expanded beyond San Francisco.

    After losing nearly $6 billion since the end of 2019, Cruise has shifted into reverse as it scrambles to control the fallout from the Oct. 2 accident that critically injured the run-over pedestrian and led to the recent resignation of CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt.

    Without directly addressing the potential fine, GM CEO Mary Barra said Monday that the October crash has helped the automaker learn more about the need for transparency and a better relationship with regulators.

    “We’re very focused on righting the ship here because this is technology that can make the way we move from point A to point B safer,” Barra told a gathering of automotive media.

    Barra also pointed to the overhaul of Cruise’s management that included a reorganization of its government-relations and legal teams as signs of progress. “We think we can do things more effectively,” she said.

    Cruise issued its own statement pledging to respond “in a timely manner” to the Public Utilities Commission’s concerns. The company has already hired an outside law firm to scrutinize its response to the Oct. 2 accident.

    The most serious questions about the incident concern Cruise’s handling of a video showing a robotaxi named “Panini” dragging the pedestrian 20 feet (6 meters) at a speed of seven miles per hour before coming to the stop.

    In a Dec. 1 filing recounting how Cruise handled disclosures about the accident, the Public Utilities Commission asserted the company tried to conceal how its robotaxi reacted to the accident for more than two weeks.

    The documents allege Cruise’s concealment started with an Oct. 3 phone call to a regulatory analyst who was told the robotaxi had come to an immediate stop upon impact with the pedestrian without mentioning the vehicle actually drove another 20 feet with the injured person still pinned down.

    Cruise didn’t provide the video footage until Oct. 19, according to the regulatory filing. The cover-up spanned 15 days, according to the PUC, exposing Cruise and GM to potential fines of $100,000 per day, or $1.5 million.

    ___

    AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this story.

    Source link

  • GM's Cruise robotaxi service faces potential fine in alleged cover-up of San Francisco accident

    GM's Cruise robotaxi service faces potential fine in alleged cover-up of San Francisco accident

    California regulators say a San Francisco robotaxi service owned by General Motors covered up an accident involving one of its driverless cars, raising the specter they may add a fine to the recent the suspension of its California license.

    The potential penalty facing GM’s Cruise service could be around $1.5 million, based on documents filed late last week by the California Public Utilities Commission.

    The notice orders Cruise to appear at a Feb. 6 evidentiary hearing to determine whether the robotaxi service misled regulators about what happened after one of its driverless cars ran into a pedestrian who had already been struck by another vehicle driven by a human on the evening of Oct. 2 in San Francisco.

    The February hearing comes just six months after the Public Utilities Commission authorized Cruise’s robotaxi service to begin charging passengers for around-the-clock rides throughout San Francisco despite strident objections from city officials who warned the driverless cars malfunctioned.

    Three weeks after Cruise’s Oct. 2 accident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles effectively shut down robotaxi service by suspending its license to operate in the state.

    The suspension was a major blow for Cruise and its corporate parent GM, which absorbed huge losses during the development of the driverless service that was supposed to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2025 as it expanded beyond San Francisco.

    After losing nearly $6 billion since the end of 2019, Cruise has shifted into reverse as it scrambles to control the fallout from the Oct. 2 accident that critically injured the run-over pedestrian and led to the recent resignation of CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt.

    “Cruise is committed to rebuilding trust with our regulators and will respond in a timely manner” to the Public Utilities Commission, the company said in a Monday statement. The San Francisco-based company has already hired an outside law firm to scrutinize its response to the Oct. 2 accident.

    The most serious questions about the incident concern Cruise’s handling of a video showing a robotaxi named “Panini” dragging the pedestrian 20 feet before coming to the stop.

    In a Dec. 1 filing recounting how Cruise handled disclosures about the accident, the Public Utilities Commission asserted the company tried to conceal how its robotaxi reacted to the accident for more than two weeks.

    Cruise didn’t provide the video footage until Oct. 19, according to the regulatory filing. The cover-up spanned 15 days, according to the PUC, exposing Cruise and GM to potential fines of $100,000 per day, or $1.5 million.

    Source link

  • General Motors’ autonomous vehicle unit recalls cars for software update after dragging a pedestrian

    General Motors’ autonomous vehicle unit recalls cars for software update after dragging a pedestrian

    DETROIT — General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is recalling all 950 of its cars to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October.

    The company said in documents posted by U.S. safety regulators on Wednesday that, with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future.

    The Oct. 2 crash prompted Cruise to suspend driverless operations nationwide after California regulators found that its cars posed a danger to public safety. The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which was transporting passengers without human drivers throughout San Francisco.

    In the crash, another vehicle with a person behind the wheel struck a pedestrian, sending the person into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. The Cruise initially stopped but still hit the person. But it then pulled to the right to get out of traffic, pulling the person about 20 feet (six meters) forward. The pedestrian was pinned under one of the Cruise vehicle’s tires and was critically injured.

    Cruise says in documents posted by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says.

    In a statement Wednesday, the GM unit said that it did the recall even though it determined that a similar crash with a risk of serious injury could happen again every 10 million to 100 million miles without the update.

    “We strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer,” the statement said. “As our software continues to improve, it is likely we will file additional recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to enhance safety across our fleet.”

    Cruise said that after examining its system, it has decided to add a chief safety officer, hire a law firm to review its response to the Oct. 2 crash, appoint a third-party engineering firm to find the technical cause, and adopt companywide “pillars” to focus on safety and transparency.

    Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide.

    NHTSA opened an investigation Oct. 16 into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. Agency documents cited two injuries, including the Oct. 2 crash. The complaints involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles,” the agency said.

    In documents filed with NHTSA, Cruise said its automated driving system was designed in some cases to pull over and out of traffic to minimize safety risks and disruption after a crash, with the response dependent on the characteristics of the crash. But in certain circumstances such as a pedestrian positioned on the ground in the vehicle’s path, pulling over is not the desired response.

    The Cruise system “inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward rather than remaining stationary,” the company said.

    While the Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license, the agency accused Cruise of misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles. The revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis.

    The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back — saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials.

    General Motors Co., has ambitious goals for Cruise. The Detroit automaker had been expecting annual revenue of $1 billion from Cruise by 2025 — a big jump from the $106 million in revenue last year.

    GM is temporarily pausing production of the Origin, a fully autonomous vehicle 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.

    Source link

  • General Motors’ autonomous vehicle unit recalls cars for software update after dragging a pedestrian

    General Motors’ autonomous vehicle unit recalls cars for software update after dragging a pedestrian

    DETROIT — General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is recalling all 950 of its cars to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October.

    The company said in documents posted by U.S. safety regulators on Wednesday that with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future.

    The Oct. 2 crash prompted Cruise to suspend driverless operations nationwide after California regulators found that its cars posed a danger to public safety. The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which was transporting passengers without human drivers throughout San Francisco.

    In the crash, another vehicle with a person behind the wheel struck a pedestrian, sending the person into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. The Cruise initially stopped but still hit the person. But it then pulled to the right to get out of traffic, pulling the person about 20 feet (six meters) forward. The pedestrian was pinned under one of the Cruise vehicle’s tires and was critically injured.

    Cruise says in documents posted by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says.

    In a statement Wednesday, the GM unit said that it did the recall even though it determined that a similar crash with a risk of serious injury could happen again every 10 million to 100 million miles without the update.

    “We strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer,” the statement said. “As our software continues to improve, it is likely we will file additional recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to enhance safety across our fleet.”

    Cruise said that after examining its system, it has decided to add a chief safety officer, hire a law firm to review its response to the Oct. 2 crash, appoint a third-party engineering firm to find the technical cause, and adopt companywide “pillars” to focus on safety and transparency.

    Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide.

    NHTSA opened an investigation Oct. 16 into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. The reports, including two injuries, involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Oct. 2 crash was included in the probe.

    In documents filed with NHTSA, Cruise said its automated driving system was designed in some cases to pull over and out of traffic to minimize safety risks and disruption after a crash, with the response dependent on the characteristics of the crash. But in certain circumstances such as a pedestrian positioned on the ground in the vehicle’s path, pulling over is not the desired response.

    The Cruise system “inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward rather than remaining stationary,” the company said.

    While the Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license, the agency accused Cruise of misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles. The revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis.

    The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back — saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials.

    General Motors Co., has ambitious goals for Cruise. The Detroit automaker had been expecting annual revenue of $1 billion from Cruise by 2025 — a big jump from the $106 million in revenue last year.

    Source link

  • Cruise, GM’s robotaxi service, suspends all driverless operations nationwide

    Cruise, GM’s robotaxi service, suspends all driverless operations nationwide

    NEW YORK — Cruise, the autonomous vehicle unit owned by General Motors, is suspending driverless operations nationwide days after regulators in California found that its driverless cars posed a danger to public safety.

    The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week revoked the license for Cruise, which recently began transporting passengers throughout San Francisco.

    Cruise is also being investigated by U.S. regulators after receiving reports of potential risks to pedestrians and passengers.

    “We have decided to proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust,” Cruise wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Thursday night.

    The choice to suspend its driverless services isn’t related to any new on-road incidents, Cruise added. Human-supervised operations of Cruise’s autonomous vehicles, or AVs, will continue — including under California’s indefinite suspension.

    General Motors Co., which has ambitious goals for Cruise, has taken a significant hit this week. The Detroit automaker had been expecting annual revenue of $1 billion from Cruise by 2025 — a big jump from the $106 million in revenue last year.

    Cruise has also tested a robotaxi service in Los Angeles, as well as cities like Phoenix and Austin, Texas.

    While the California Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license this week, the agency charged Cruise with misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles. Tuesday’s revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis.

    Earlier this month, a Cruise robotaxi notably ran over a pedestrian who had been hit by another vehicle driven by a human. The pedestrian became pinned under a tire of the Cruise vehicle after it came to a stop — and then was pulled for about 20 feet (six meters) as the car attempted to move off the road.

    The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back — saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials. In a Tuesday statement, Cruise said it cooperating with regulators investigating the Oct. 2 accident — and that its engineers are working on way for its robotaxis to improve their response “to this kind of extremely rare event.”

    Still, some are skeptical of Cruise’s response to the accident and point to lingering questions. Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies automated vehicles, wants to know “who knew what when?” at Cruise, and maybe GM, following the accident.

    Also earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it was investigating Cruise’s autonomous vehicle division after receiving reports of incidents where vehicles may not have used proper caution around pedestrians in roadways, including crosswalks.

    The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation said it received two reports involving pedestrian injuries from Cruise vehicles. It also identified two additional incidents from videos posted to public websites, noting that the total number is unknown.

    In December of last year, the NHSTA opened a separate probe into reports of Cruise’s robotaxis that stopped too quickly or unexpectedly quit moving, potentially stranding passengers. Three rear-end collisions that reportedly took place after Cruise AVs braked hard kicked off the investigation.

    According to an Oct. 20 letter that was made public Thursday, since beginning this probe the NHSTA has received five other reports of Cruise AVs unexpectedly breaking with no obstacles ahead. Each case involved AVs operating without human supervision and resulted in rear-end collisions.

    “We welcome NHTSA’s questions related to our safety record and operations,” Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow said in a statement Friday. “We have cooperated with each of their requests to date as part of the ongoing investigation process and will continue doing so.”

    Cruise has also previously maintained that its record of driverless miles have outperformed comparable human drivers in terms of safety, notably crash rates.

    It’s unclear what this week’s suspension of driverless operations will mean for Cruise, and perhaps the future for AVs as a whole. Walker Smith notes that there are several possibilities — including distinguishing Cruise’s prospects from its competitors, particularly those who haven’t expanded as aggressively, or a “Tesla scenario” where initial outrage may not amount to prompt, significant changes.

    There could also be larger repercussions for the industry — with this month’s news feeding into “the emerging narrative that automated vehicles and their companies are struggling and failing,” he said. “Cities like San Francisco, that are already concerned about automated vehicles, (may) see and use this as as proof that that the industry is running amok.”

    That doesn’t mean Cruise won’t resume its driverless operations again one day. But it will boil down to what additional information comes out down the road — as well as Cruise identifying specific action items in the near future, Walker Smith added.

    “If we can’t trust a company deploying automated vehicles, they have no business on our roads,” Walker Smith said. He later noted that Cruise’s announcement Thursday “expressly referenced earning trust, and I think they need to say what that means.”

    ___

    AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

    Source link