Tag: self-driving cars

Tesla’s Cybercab Is Here

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Movie studios are where Hollywood spins fantastical worlds out of fancy camera angles and special effects. So where better to show off the Tesla Cybercab, a two-door self-driving taxi that CEO Elon Musk says will be in production in just three years—but that’s still fascinatingly short on firm detail?

Almost an hour after Tesla had said the debut event would begin, Musk was escorted by a man dressed as an astronaut to the butterfly doors of the silver prototype. He took a quick, seemingly driverless jaunt through the dark, ghostly streets of the Warner Bros. Studios in Southern California, before emerging from the car to take the stage.

Later, in front of an audience of excited Tesla fans and shareholders, Musk referred to the entire setup as a “set”—far from the messy, busy streets where an eventual autonomous vehicle might one day be challenged to drive.

Tesla also showed off a “Robovan” designed to autonomously move up to 20 people. Like the Cybercab, the van did not appear to have pedals or a steering wheel, just seats.

Musk, an admitted collector of missed deadlines, has been promising Tesla self-driving tech since 2016. On Thursday evening, he made a few more promises. Full self-driving (unsupervised), a technology meant to be autonomous, will be available in California and Texas next year, Musk says. He says the Cybercab will go into production in 2026, and will eventually cost less than $30,000.

“I think it’s going to be a glorious future,” he said.

The Robovan.

Photograph: WIRED Staff/Tesla

The interior of the Robovan. It holds up to 20 humans.

Photograph: WIRED Staff/Tesla

Musk repeated a vision he’s articulated before: that one day, Tesla owners may be able to send their vehicles off to offer rides on their own, driving others around to increase each individual vehicle’s utility by five to 10 times. In the future, one person might own a fleet of autonomous taxis and “take care of them like a shepherd tends to their flock,” Musk said. Tesla has shown off mock-ups of an Uber-like app that might allow a rider to hail an autonomous Tesla cab. But Musk didn’t articulate new details about the service Thursday.

Video renderings showed robots cleaning out the interior of a Cybercab, pointing to a solution to an oft-cited autonomous taxi problem—how to keep the things clean without the assistance of a human driver. The robotaxi would also be charged wirelessly, through inductive charging, Musk said. But a timeline for both tech features went unmentioned.

The event concluded with Optimus, a humanoid robot that Musk has said could eventually make the automaker some $25 trillion dollars by becoming “the biggest product ever, of any kind.” The robot was making progress, Musk said. To prove it, five bots illuminated by lights danced in a nearby gazebo. More Optimus bots mingled with the crowd after the presentation, serving drinks at the bar and posing for photos.

Optimus dances.

Photograph: WIRED Staff/Tesla

It’s your “humanoid friend.”

In April, Musk seemed to beat back concerns that Tesla was losing its EV edge by insisting autonomy and robotics would live at the center of Tesla’s mission. “The value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy,” Musk told investors this summer. He also encouraged non-believers to sell their Tesla stock.

The event comes at a critical time for Tesla, which faces increased competition in electric vehicles not only from legacy automakers, but upstart firms in China, which are exporting inexpensive vehicles overseas like never before. Tesla deliveries are down globally this year, and the automaker last quarter underperformed compared to analysts’ expectations. The automaker laid off some 14,000 employees earlier this year, many working on the core competencies of electric vehicle production, including batteries and charging infrastructure. A series of top executives have departed the automaker in just the past few weeks.

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Aarian Marshall

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October 10, 2024
Tesla unveiling its long-awaited robotaxi amid doubts about the technology it runs on

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DETROIT — Expectations are high for the long-awaited unveiling of Tesla’s robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night. Too high for some analysts and investors.

The company, which began selling software it calls “Full Self-Driving” nine years ago that still can’t drive itself, is expected to show off the so-called “Cybercab” vehicle, which may not have a steering wheel and pedals.

The unveiling comes as CEO Elon Musk tries to persuade investors that his company is more about artificial intelligence and robotics as it struggles to sell its core products, an aging lineup of electric vehicles.

Some analysts are predicting that it will be a historic day for the Austin, Texas, company as it takes a huge step toward a long-awaited robotaxi service powered by AI.

But others who track self-driving vehicles say Musk has yet to demonstrate Tesla’s system can travel safely without a human driver ready to step in to prevent crashes.

“I don’t know why the headlines continue to be ‘What will Tesla announce?’ rather than ‘Why does Tesla think we’re so stupid?’” said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies autonomous vehicles.

He doesn’t see Tesla having the ability to show off software and hardware that can work without human supervision, even in a limited area that’s well-known to the driving system.

“We just haven’t seen any indication that that is what Tesla is working toward,” Walker Smith said. “If they were, they would be showcasing this not on a closed lot, but in an actual city or on an actual freeway.”

Without a clear breakthrough in autonomous technology, Tesla will just show off a vehicle with no pedals or steering wheel, which already has been done by numerous other companies, he said.

“The challenge is developing a combination of hardware and software plus the human and digital infrastructure to actually safely drive a vehicle even without a steering wheel on public roads in any conditions,” Walker Smith said. “Tesla has been giving us that demo every year, and it’s not reassuring us.”

Many industry analysts aren’t expecting much from the event either. While TD Cowen’s Jeff Osborne expects Musk to reveal the Cybercab and perhaps the Model 2, a lower-cost electric vehicle, he said he doesn’t expect much of a change on self-driving technology.

“We expect the event to be light on details and appeal to the true long-term believers in Tesla,” Osborne wrote in a note. Musk’s claims on the readiness of Full Self Driving, though, will be crucial “given past delays and ongoing scrutiny” of the system and of Tesla’s less-sophisticated Autopilot driver-assist software.

Tesla’s model lineup is struggling and isn’t likely to be refreshed until late next year at the earliest, Osborne wrote. Plus, he wrote that in TD Cowen’s view the “politicization of Elon” is tarnishing the Tesla brand among Democrat buyers in the U.S.

Musk has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and has pushed many conservative causes. Last weekend he joined Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.

Musk has been saying for more than five years that a fleet of robotaxis is near, allowing Tesla owners to make money by having their cars carry passengers while they’re not in use by the owners.

But he has acknowledged that past predictions for the use of autonomous driving proved too optimistic. In 2019, he promised the fleet of autonomous vehicles by the end of 2020.

However, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who is bullish on Tesla stock, wrote in an investor note that robotaxi event, dubbed “We, Robot,” by the company, will be a new chapter of growth for Tesla.

Ives expects many updates and details from Tesla on the robotaxi, plus breakthroughs in Full Self Driving and artificial intelligence. He also is looking for a phased-in strategy for rolling out the robotaxis within the next year, as well as a Tesla ride-sharing app, and demonstrations of technology “designed to revolutionize urban transportation.”

Ives, whose organization will attend the invitation-only event at the Warner Bros. studio, wrote that he also expects updates on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot, which the company plans to start selling in 2026.

“We believe this is a pivotal time for Tesla as the company prepares to release its years of Robotaxi R&D shadowed behind the curtains, while Musk & Co. lay out the company’s vision for the future,” Ives wrote.

The announcement comes as U.S. safety regulators are investigating Full Self Driving and Autopilot based on evidence that it has a weak system for making sure human drivers pay attention.

In addition, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration forced Tesla to recall Full Self-Driving in February because it allowed speeding and violated other traffic laws, especially near intersections. Tesla was to fix the problems with an online software update.

Last April in Snohomish County, Washington, near Seattle, a Tesla using Full Self-Driving hit and killed a motorcyclist, authorities said. The Tesla driver told authorities that he was using the system while looking at his phone when the car rear-ended the motorcyclist. The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

NHTSA says it’s evaluating information on the fatal crash from Tesla and law enforcement officials.

The Justice Department also has sought information from Tesla about Full Self-Driving and Autopilot, as well as other items.

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October 10, 2024
Waymo’s New Agreement With Hyundai Raises Questions About China

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Soon you could see Waymo self-driving tech in Hyundai cars. The autonomous driving tech developer Waymo said this week that it would partner with the Korean automaker Hyundai to equip a fleet of its electric vehicles with self-driving technology. The vehicles, modified Ioniq 5s, will hit the road as part of Waymo’s self-driving ride-hail service in late 2025, the companies said.

In a statement, Hyundai Motor Company president and global COO José Muñoz called the agreement a “first step” in the two firms’ partnership. “We are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration,” he said—opening up the possibility that Waymo self-driving tech could one day be installed on Hyundai passenger vehicles.

However, the multinational partnership is the latest to prompt questions about how Waymo, arguably the world’s most successful autonomous-driving company, will handle a global realignment of the automotive industry.

China’s new dominance in auto manufacturing and export has worried other global automakers, some of whom have argued that the country has unfair trade advantages. Over the past year, Western countries have built firmer trade walls to prevent the incursion of inexpensive Chinese electric and autonomous vehicles. Last month, the US finalized rules that dramatically increased tariffs against Chinese-made EVs and battery materials.

The US Commerce Department also last month proposed a rule that would ban some Chinese- and Russian-made automotive hardware and software from the US, with an emphasis on technology that enables autonomy. Just this week, the European Union voted to hike tariffs against Chinese-made electric vehicles.

Interestingly, Waymo insists that a partnership with Chinese-owned automaker Zeekr is still on. The deal, announced in late 2021, has seen Zeekr purpose-build roomier autonomous minivans for the Alphabet subsidiary that are also less expensive to manufacture. The Zeekr vehicle officially made its debut in San Francisco in June, though Waymo says it’s still in testing and is not yet part of its public ride-hail fleet.

Zeekr is owned by Chinese automaker Geely, though its design center and one of its research and development facilities are in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Swedish city is also the headquarters of majority Geely-owned automakers Volvo and Polestar, an all-electric premium automaker.

In an email on Friday, Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli wrote that the Hyundai Ioniq 5s “will not replace any of our other vehicle platforms,” and said the company is “hard at work validating” the latest version of Waymo’s tech on the Zeekr platform.

In proposing new rules targeting Chinese-made auto software and hardware, the US government argued that such tech installed on US vehicles could create a long-term national security issue. “Imagine if there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of Chinese-connected vehicles on American roads that could be immediately and simultaneously disabled by somebody in Beijing,” US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said earlier this year.

But in public comments submitted to the Commerce Department in April, Waymo representatives insisted that, despite its partnership with the Chinese automaker, China has nothing to do with the vital tech of the Zeekr-made robotaxi. “The AV-ready base vehicles being provided to Waymo have no driving automation or telematics capabilities built into them,” the company wrote, saying that only US-based Waymo personnel install autonomous technology onto vehicles at an American factory. The company said that, once operating in the US, the vehicles cannot remotely communicate with the vehicle’s manufacturer—Zeekr.

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Aarian Marshall

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October 4, 2024
Cybertruck Finally Gets Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

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A select number of all-electric Tesla Cybertrucks now have the ability to drive on US highways hands-free, after the automaker pushed an update to vehicles this morning. Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy wrote on X that Cybertrucks will be the first Tesla vehicles to receive the “end-to-end on highway” driving feature, which the company says uses a “neural net” to navigate all parts of highway driving.

“Nice work,” Tesla CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk responded to his AI chief.

The feature appears to be in “early access,” meaning it’s available only to some Cybertruck owners who purchased the feature. It’s unclear when the automaker will release the feature more widely. Tesla, which disbanded its public relations team in 2021, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Tesla owners’ manuals maintain that the full-self-driving feature, or “FSD (Supervised),” should be used only if drivers are paying attention to the road. The feature reportedly turns off if it detects that drivers are looking elsewhere. Critics have argued that Tesla’s marketing incorrectly leads drivers to assume that FSD can truly drive itself and that the automaker hasn’t been proactive in preventing driver misuse.

Customers who purchased base model Cybertrucks early, at preorder, paid $7,000 for access to the driving feature, with some waiting almost a year for it to be available on their trucks. Tesla owners can now subscribe to the FSD (Supervised) feature at $99 per month.

One Cybertruck driver reported on X that, based on driving this morning, the feature is “working well.”

The feature’s introduction is some much-needed good news for the Cybertruck, which has faced a rocky introduction into Tesla’s lineup. The vehicle was delayed for years by the Covid-19 pandemic and by engineering issues. (A leaked “alpha” briefing on the vehicle, first reported by WIRED, found that the truck had serious issues with braking, handling, and noise.)

The all-electric truck has also been subject to a handful of safety recalls, including one in which the company had to repair or replace accelerator pedals that had gotten stuck.

As more automakers rush into the electrification race, and Tesla’s huge lead in electric cars has been eroded by other manufacturers, Musk and company seem to believe that “self-driving” features enabled by AI will help Tesla regain its edge. “The value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy,” Musk told investors this summer.

The US road safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has found that Tesla’s Autopilot feature, an older and less sophisticated version of FSD, didn’t sufficiently prevent drivers from misuse—and was involved in 13 fatal crashes between 2018 and 2023. After a years-long investigation into Autopilot, last year Tesla recalled 2 million vehicles with Autopilot. (The automaker said it did not agree with the government’s conclusions.)

Earlier this year, Tesla settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a Northern California man who died while using Autopilot on his Model X.

Tesla also faces a class action lawsuit alleging it misled customers who purchased Teslas after Musk promised the cars had everything they needed to drive autonomously. Eight years later, Tesla has made significant improvements to its driverless features and has plans to make big bucks off the feature—but still hasn’t produced self-driving technology.

That could change this month. Musk has promised that Tesla will unveil a self-driving taxi, calling it a Cybercab, at an event in Southern California on October 10.

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September 30, 2024
Biden administration seeks to ban Chinese, Russian tech in US autonomous vehicles

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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.

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September 25, 2024
Waymo Is Picking Up at the Airport. That’s a Big Deal

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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.

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August 28, 2024
Cruise will dispatch some of its trouble-ridden robotaxis to join Uber’s ride-hailing service

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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.

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August 26, 2024
Japan rivals Nissan and Honda will share EV components and AI research as they play catch up

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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

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August 1, 2024
A driverless car hits a person crossing against the light in China

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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.

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July 9, 2024
Waymo recalls more than 600 self-driving vehicles for software, map updates after one strikes a pole

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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)

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June 13, 2024
From decay to dazzling. Ford restores grandeur to former eyesore Detroit train station

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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.

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June 3, 2024
Red, yellow, green … and white? Smarter vehicles could mean big changes for the traffic light

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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.

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May 10, 2024
Elon Musk Can’t Solve Tesla’s China Crisis With His Desperate Asia Visit

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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.

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Carlton Reid

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April 29, 2024
Tesla Autopilot Was Uniquely Risky—and May Still Be

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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.

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Aarian Marshall

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April 26, 2024
China’s Best Self-Driving Car Platforms, Tested and Compared

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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.

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Mark Andrews

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March 12, 2024
California authorizes expansion of Waymo’s driverless car services to LA, SF peninsula

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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.

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March 1, 2024
Outgoing leader says US safety agency has the people and expertise to regulate high-tech vehicles

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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.

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January 30, 2024
Waymo will start testing robotaxis on Phoenix highways | TechCrunch

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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.

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Sean O’Kane

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January 8, 2024
GM's Cruise robotaxi unit lays off 900 workers with investigation into San Francisco crash ongoing

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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.

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December 14, 2023
GM's Cruise robotaxi service faces fine in alleged cover-up of San Francisco accident's severity

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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.

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

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