[ad_1]
[ad_2]Source link
Ain’t no party like an Orlando House Party
contributed to this report.
Tag: waymo
-
Rivian Is Coming for Uber and Waymo With Its ‘AI-Defined Vehicle’
[ad_1]
Rivian is putting AI in the driver’s seat. At an event on Thursday, the Palo Alto-based electric vehicle company unveiled a new AI assistant feature and teased details about the expanded self-driving tech it’s developing. Rivian’s AI-powered Rivian Assistant, which responds to the phrase “Hey Rivian” or can be activated via a button on the steering wheel, will be integrated with Google Calendar so it can show drivers their schedule, change a meeting time, and relay information to others.
“The assistant has memory, has context, it remembers the full story,” Wassym Bensaid, the company’s chief software officer, said during the event, after a live demonstration. “Who you are talking to, where you are going, and what you just searched for, and then it puts everything into a perfect message.” With these features, he added, Rivian will deliver an “AI-defined vehicle.”
The company also announced its forthcoming autonomous driving capabilities, which involve scenarios in which the driver can have their hands off the wheel but need to watch the road ahead, and eventually situations in which the driver can have their hands off the wheel and their eyes off the road. Coming down the pike next year is point-to-point travel, “in which the vehicle can drive address-to-address,” said Rivian founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe. “What that means is that you can get into the vehicle at your house, plug in the address to where you’re going, and the vehicle will completely drive you there.” When that happens, your hands can be off the wheel but you still need to be watching the road.
After that, he said, comes “eyes-off [driving], meaning you can navigate point-to-point with your hands off the wheel, but importantly, your eyes off the road. This gives you your time back. You can be on your phone, or reading a book—no longer needing to be actively involved in the operation of the vehicle.”
Rivian’s forthcoming R2 vehicle (pictured below) is expected to cost around $45,000 when it goes on sale next year, making it more affordable than the company’s R1T truck and R1S SUV. Both of those vehicles start at north of $70,000.
Scaringe also said that after the hands-off and eyes-off travel comes something more ambitious: an even greater level of autonomy approaching that of true self-driving vehicles, like in the ballpark of what Waymo already offers. “The next major step will be personal Level Four,” he said. “With this, the vehicle will operate entirely on its own. This means it can drop the kids off at school, it can pick you up at the airport.” Eventually, he said, “this also enables us to pursue opportunities in the ride-share space.”
Scaringe also said that the quantity of roads in North America that existing Rivian second-gen vehicles can drive in hands-off mode will expand after an over-the-air update. That will allow Rivians to handle over 3.5 million miles of roads in hands-off mode, he said.
[ad_2]
Rob Verger
Source link -
Baby delivered in Waymo continues proud tradition of not making it to the hospital | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
A pregnant woman in San Francisco gave birth inside a Waymo robotaxi Monday night en route to UCSF Medical Center, marking the latest milestone in the driverless car saga that no one saw coming — except everyone with more than six months of experience behind the wheel of a ride-share vehicle.
According to The SF Standard, Waymo’s remote team detected “unusual activity” and called 911, though the vehicle beat emergency services to the hospital.
Some traditions, it seems, are immune to disruption. For decades, expectant mothers have been racing against biology in the back seats of taxis and Ubers from London to Los Angeles. There was the mother in India who named her son Uber after giving birth to him en route to the hospital (the driver reportedly helped in the delivery). There was also the California couple in 2017 who welcomed their baby in an Uber during Shabbat.”Everyone is telling us to name the baby Uber,” the father joked, before adding, “But we can’t do that.” (Ah, though, they could have!)
The stories go on and on. Now, Silicon Valley has automated the experience, at least partially.
The vehicle in San Francisco was promptly removed for cleaning. Further, this wasn’t Waymo’s first birth — the company told the Standard that a Phoenix baby got there first. “While this is a very rare occurrence,” a Waymo spokesperson deadpanned, “some of our newest riders just can’t wait to experience their first Waymo ride.”
[ad_2]
Connie Loizos
Source link -
Buckle up: Waymo’s self-driving taxis are coming to Orlando
[ad_1]
Self-driving taxis from the Alphabet-owned company Waymo are coming to the streets of Orlando early next year, the company announced in a news release. This will make Orlando one of the first 10 cities in the country to offer the autonomous vehicle service.
“The future of transportation is accelerating, and we are driving it forward with a commitment to quality and safety,” the company stated. “Our rigorous process of continuous iteration, validation, and local engagement ensures that we put communities first as we expand.”
Waymo vehicles, powered by artificial intelligence technology, are fully self-driving, so don’t expect to see a driver or human supervisor behind the steering wheel of one of these suckers. Waymo’s so-called “robotaxis” are already in operation in Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As of May, the AI company — owned by Google’s parent company — has provided more than 10 million rides since it launched driverless trips for the public in 2020.
“We’re thrilled that Waymo plans to bring its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to Orlando, and to the tens of millions of visitors we host each year,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a statement, adding that he plans to be “one of the very first” riders. “Waymo will be another exciting transportation option for the region that will enhance the investments we are already making in reducing congestion and increasing road and pedestrian safety,” he said.
According to a city spokesperson, Waymo “has been keeping the city in the loop about their plans” to expand to the City Beautiful, but said that there are no city approvals needed for them to operate.
The company, at the same time, announced plans to expand to Dallas, Houston, Miami and San Antonio in the “coming weeks.” The cost of a Waymo ride can vary based on factors such as distance and duration.
A reporter for Business Insider found that his 12-minute Waymo ride in San Francisco was pricier at $16 than a ride using the same route through Uber and Lyft. However, since no tip to a driver is necessary with Waymo, the cost for an Uber leveled out to be about the same. The trip through Lyft was still a few dollars cheaper — even with a 20 percent tip included.
Is Waymo safe?
Waymo has received criticism elsewhere for risks to public safety and for its potential to undermine publicly owned and operated transit systems (despite incentives Waymo has offered for people to use both).
Labor unions such as the Teamsters and Transport Workers Union, both of which represent professionals in the trucking and transportation industries, have similarly called out Waymo for threatening their members’ jobs.
“New Yorkers be warned, Waymo will turn pedestrians into cannon fodder and will block streets for emergency responders,” said Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen in a recent statement on Waymo’s expansion to New York City. “Waymo isn’t ready for NYC’s streets and the end goal is to replace rideshare drivers, taxi drivers, and transit workers with robots.”
Waymo, just one of several companies that have rolled out autonomous vehicles, has faced protests from drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft in cities such as in Seattle, where Waymo has also looked to expand.
A Teamsters local in Boston last month joined a labor coalition in support of a city ordinance there that would regulate and study the potential impact of autonomous vehicles. “I regularly transport patients to Boston hospitals, and if robotaxis block us, freeze in place, or don’t know how to yield, they could kill people,” said Abby O’Brien, a Teamster and paramedic for a local ambulance company.
Waymo for its part has pushed back on critical assessments of its safety and its potential impact on the transportation workforce. “Transportation is a team sport, and we believe autonomous vehicles, professional drivers, and the wider ecosystem will thrive together as we increase transportation options for everyone,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher told Axios in a statement. Driving and trucking is one of the most common occupations among young men without a college degree, a 2024 analysis from the Pew Research Center found.
As far as safety, Waymo has faced its fair share of concerns — even recalling some 1,200 of its vehicles last year after “minor collisions” — yet has continued to defend the safety and integrity of its software. The company recently released the results of an independent safety audit that determined Waymo’s procedures for determining the safety of their vehicles met industry standards.
A probe by the federal government, launched last May to investigate a “series of minor collisions and unexpected behavior” from Waymo vehicles, concluded this past July with federal safety regulators reportedly opting not to take any further action.
However, as of last month, the company is once again under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over reports that its vehicles may not be complying with traffic safety rules around stopped school buses. A Waymo spokesperson told news service Reuters that they had “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release.”
An independent analysis of federal crash data by the Substack publication Understanding AI found that, from February to August of this year, most of the 41 crashes that reportedly involved Waymo’s robotaxis weren’t the fault of Waymo’s software itself, but rather actions by other drivers or — as The Atlantic put it — “seemingly an act of God.”
Waymo has argued that its robotaxis are actually safer than vehicles with human drivers, stating their “Driver” (unlike actual humans) is “always alert, follows speed limits, promotes seat belt use, and operates some of the safest vehicles on the road.”
Orlando has been working toward eliminating all traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries in the city through its “Vision Zero” plan by 2040. And city officials say they’ve already made progress.
According to a recent news release, Orlando has already seen a 40 percent reduction in “deadly and serious-injury crashes” since 2019. The city credits this progress to, among other things, their red light camera program (which fines drivers who run red lights), the completion of more than 100 “safety projects” along roads citywide, and improving the city’s emergency response through better coordination with Orlando’s police and fire departments.
“Every life lost on our roadways is one too many,” Mayor Dyer said in a recent statement. “By designing safer streets, using technology to improve enforcement and working closely with our first responders and residents, we’re proving that traffic deaths are preventable and that together, we can make Orlando’s streets safe for everyone.”
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
Related Stories
Plus ‘Beatles Anthology,’ ‘Troll 2’ and everything else new this week to streaming
Featuring Kimball Collins, Dave Cannalte, Jimmy Joslin, Magic Mike, DJ Icey, BMF, Cliff T and Carlos Mendoza
Related
[ad_2]
McKenna Schueler
Source link -
Waymo gets regulatory approval to expand across Bay Area and Southern California | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
Waymo continues to expand its reach, with the robotaxi company posting Friday that it’s now “officially authorized to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State.”
Waymo already operates in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles (and outside California as well, in Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix). But maps published by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles showed that the company can now test and deploy its autonomous vehicles across a much larger area in both the Bay Area and Southern California.
In the Bay Area, Waymo’s approved areas of operation now include most of the East Bay and North Bay (including Napa/Wine Country), as well as Sacramento. In Southern California, the company’s approved territory now stretches from Santa Clarita (north of Los Angeles) to San Diego.
The company will need additional regulatory approval before it can carry paying passengers in some of these regions, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Although Waymo’s post doesn’t offer many details about when it plans to actually start offering rides in all these new areas, the company wrote, “Next stop: welcoming riders in San Diego in mid-2026!”
The company had previously announced its intention to launch in San Diego next year, along with Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
There’s been plenty of Waymo expansion news in the past couple weeks, as the company announced that it will be entering Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa; is removing safety drivers ahead of its commercial launch in Miami; and will start offering rides that use freeways in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026We discussed the growth of Waymo and other robotaxi companies on the latest episode of the Equity podcast. My co-host Sean O’Kane noted that as Waymo begins to provide more unfettered access across the Bay Area, people could be spending a lot more time in their robotaxis — so we might see them using the service in new, weird, or even dangerous ways.
[ad_2]
Anthony Ha
Source link -
California Just Legalized Waymo in Some of the Nation’s Most Populous Areas
[ad_1]
On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles published a document outlining a list of newly approved areas of coverage for Alphabet, Inc.’s robotaxi service Waymo, and the implications could be massive.
The areas where “testing and deployment” of Waymo driverless taxis will now be legally tolerated by the state include two massive, apparently continuous swaths of geography full of interconnected urban population centers, suburbs, exurbs, and the rural land in between them. This includes chunks of (in alphabetical order) Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, Napa, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, Ventura, and Yolo Counties.
The new map includes much of California wine country, and fills in the remainder of the Bay Area. It also adds a great deal of coverage to densely populated parts of southern California. Most of Orange and San Diego Counties are now state-approved Waymo zones, for instance, and each of those accounts for millions of residents. If Waymo follows this approval with a rollout of its service in all these areas, it means commuters can travel for hours in Waymo vehicles, sightseers can take long day trips. Exurban residents can take Waymo rides to Los Angeles International Airport.
Famous expanses of California highways—and freeways—could potentially open up to driverless taxi traffic. You could take the scenic route up Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego to Malibu, or driverlessly reenact the first episode of The O.C. by hailing a ride from Chino to Newport Beach.
Of course, the price of doing any of these things could be breathtaking. At the average of $11.22 per kilometer cited by one Waymo price analysis from June, it would cost, by my count, $2,636 to travel from San Diego to Malibu in a Waymo if the current pricing pattern holds—though a new pricing pattern would probably emerge for longer rides. A similar ride would cost about $200 in a human-piloted Lyft or Uber, according to the fare estimator site Rideguru.
Waymo says it has no specific plan for rolling out its service in most of these newly permitted areas, though it does have its eyes on one of these areas. “We appreciate the DMV’s approval of our expanded fully autonomous operations,” a Waymo representative told CBS News, who claimed the company’s next expansion “will be San Diego, where we’ll welcome our first riders in mid-2026.”
[ad_2]
Mike Pearl
Source link -
Waymo announces driverless taxi fleet is coming to Minneapolis
[ad_1]
Get ready to see self-driving vehicles cruising across Minneapolis.
Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, says “a mixed fleet of our Jaguar I-PACE and Zeekr RT vehicles” will hit the streets starting Thursday morning in its efforts to “lay the early groundwork” for full service in Minnesota’s largest city.
“To prepare for Minneapolis’ winter weather, we’ve made great strides in our efforts to operate in heavier snow — including testing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, California’s Sierra Nevada, and Upstate New York,” Waymo said in a statement.
State lawmakers and safe-driving advocates are hailing the company’s arrival, including the bipartisan co-chairs of the Minnesota House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee.
“We support proven, safe, and reliable options to our transit network that directly supports our goals of modernizing our infrastructure, while creating a cleaner, more efficient transportation system,” said Republican Rep. Jon Koznick.
WCCO
“We are committed to ensuring autonomous deployment like Waymo’s is done responsibly, leveraging this innovation to improve connectivity, reduce congestion, and secure Minnesota’s place as a national leader in the future of mobility,” said Democratic Rep. Erin Koegel.
Lauren Johnson, regional executive director of the Minnesota chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says Waymo’s arrival will also help cut down on the number of impaired drivers on Minneapolis streets.
“MADD has been a long-time partner with Waymo, and we are proud of our shared commitment to protect drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and the community,” Johnson said.
Is Waymo really ready for prime time?
While Waymo — whose driverless taxi fleets first hit the streets of Phoenix in 2020 — positions itself as a transportation panacea, the company has been criticized for risky road testing of its fleets in real traffic.
In an incident earlier this year near Atlanta, a Waymo vehicle failed to yield for a school bus that had its red lights activated. And in an incident in San Francisco, a police officer spotted a Waymo vehicle making an illegal U-turn, leading to a very confusing traffic stop.
The company also recalled more that 1,200 of its vehicles in May due to software issues to led cars to crash into chains, gates and other roadway barriers.
The company argues that its own safety data shows 91% fewer serious injury crashes, and 92% fewer crashes injuring a pedestrian, compared to a human driver.
Robert Sumwalt, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CBS MoneyWatch last year that self-driving vehicles are “not a perfect science yet.”
“Right now it’s like trying to send a rocket to the moon in 1910 when the Wright Brothers were still working on their planes,” said Sumwalt, who is currently CBS News’ transportation safety analyst.
Earlier this month, Sumwalt warned Waymo and other autonomous vehicle companies “need to be held to a higher standard.”
“Before we have widespread use of self-driving vehicles, we’ve got to make sure that they are implemented properly,” he said.
In a statement to WCCO, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said state law “neither prohibits nor specifically authorizes automated vehicles to conduct testing on streets in Minnesota.”
[ad_2]
Stephen Swanson
Source link -
Beloved SF cat’s death fuels Waymo criticism | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
The death of a neighborhood bodega cat named Kit Kat has shaken San Francisco’s Mission District, according to The New York Times.
After Kit Kat was run over by a Waymo robotaxi on the evening of October 27, locals created a shrine to memorialize him. The area has also been decorated with competing signs, some criticizing Waymo, others noting the many deaths caused by human drivers.
Jackie Fielder, who represents the Mission District on SF’s Board of Supervisors, brought up Kit Kat while making the case for a proposed city resolution that calls on the state to allow local voters to decide whether driverless cars can operate in their neighborhoods.
“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Fielder told the Times. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
Waymo, whose co-CEO recently spoke at Disrupt about the importance of safety, described the incident as one where a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.” The company said it sends “our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him.”
[ad_2]
Anthony Ha
Source link -
TechCrunch Mobility: The robotaxi expansion that really matters | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
It seems like a day doesn’t go by without Waymo making some kind of expansion announcement. Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., are just a few of the cities the company plans to bring its robotaxi to in the coming months. But as I have argued in this newsletter before, there is another “expansion” I think is more important.
Freeways.
And now after years of testing and development, the company’s commercial robotaxi service is using freeways around the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
This is a critical expansion for the company. It’s the concrete and asphalt connective tissue in sprawling metro areas like the Bay Area. This new freeway access is fueling Waymo’s expansion in that region, which is now 260 square miles and encompasses Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
Robotaxi rides can have more efficient routes too. Waymo told me it will reduce ride times by up to 50%.
And using freeways is also essential for Waymo to offer rides to and from the San Francisco Airport, a location the company is currently testing in.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026That freeway-to-airport moment will be the big unlock for Waymo. But will it be enough to help push it in the black? Until someone over there slides me their balance sheet, I can’t say. It will certainly be a popular option for travelers. That doesn’t mean the economics will pencil out.
Read on for more news, including Einride’s SPAC bid, deals for Harbinger and Teradar, as well as how Via fared in its first earnings and a looming shutdown for Rad Power Bikes. Plus! Scroll down to get the results of the Tesla poll.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin It’s been nearly nine months since Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson abruptly resigned, leaving the company without a permanent replacement. That may be about to change, though.
A few little birds told us Lucid Motors has zeroed in on a candidate for the top role. It’s expected to be someone outside the organization, which is perhaps no surprise; in August, we shared here that the company and the executive hiring firm it’s using had cast a very wide net and was even cold-calling some candidates. This would likely mean that Marc Winterhoff, who’s been serving as interim CEO, would slide back to the COO role he occupied before Rawlinson left.
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Deals!
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin Another SPAC has entered the AV world! Mergers with special acquisition companies may not be officially “back,” but they are certainly popular among autonomous vehicle companies.
Einride, the Swedish electric and autonomous truck startup, plans to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, just six weeks after it raised $100 million from investors. The SPAC merger with Legato Merger Corp. values Einride at $1.8 billion in pre-money equity.
Einride does generate revenue, which may sound obvious but there have been plenty of pre-revenue transportation companies that have SPAC’d in recent years.
For now, its primary source of revenue is coming from its software-as-a-service product and a fleet of 200 heavy-duty electric trucks used by companies like Heineken and PepsiCo. Its unusual-looking autonomous podlike trucks are still in pilot mode.
The merger is expected to close in the first half of 2026, with Einride making its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Forterra, a company developing autonomous tech for defense, raised $238 million in equity and debt funding. Moore Strategic Ventures led the equity piece of the funding, while Crescent Cove provided the debt financing.
Gopuff, the rapid-delivery startup, raised $250 million in a round led by Eldridge Industries and Valor Equity Partners. Baillie Gifford, Robinhood, Equalis Capital, George Ruan, Yakir Gabay, and Gopuff’s co-founders. The funding put its valuation at $8.5 billion, according to Bloomberg, a significant markdown from its last raise in 2021.
Harbinger, the Los Angeles-based electric truck startup, raised $160 million in a Series C funding round co-led by FedEx. As part of the investment, FedEx ordered 53 of Harbinger’s electric truck chassis.
Octopus Electric Vehicles, a U.K.-based electric vehicle-leasing business, has struck a deal with lenders, including Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Agricole, to take its total funding line to £2 billion ($2.6 billion), Sky News reported.
Teradar, a Boston-based startup developing a solid-state sensor, raised $150 million in a Series B funding round from investors Capricorn Investment Group, Lockheed Martin’s venture arm, mobility-focused firm Ibex Investors, and VXI Capital, a new defense-focused fund led by the former CTO of the U.S. military’s Defense Innovation Unit.
Upway, an e-bike refurbishment startup, raised $60 million in a Series C funding round led by A.P. Moller. Galvanize, Ora Global, and Sequoia Capital also participated. The company has raised more than $125 million since its founding in 2021.
Vay, a German startup that remotely pilots rental cars to customers, announced a $60 million investment from Singaporean tech heavyweight Grab. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval and expected to close by the end of the year, may be followed by “an additional $350M as joint milestones are achieved within the first year.”
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin Ford is expanding the availability of its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving technology in Europe. The automaker will make the system available in several vehicles, including the Puma, Puma Gen-E, Kuga, and Ranger PHEV 5 models starting in spring 2026.
Joby Aviation conducted the first flight of its turbine electric, autonomous VTOL aircraft. This demonstrator shouldn’t be confused with its all-electric air taxi, although it was built off that platform. This aircraft has a hybrid turbine powertrain and is designed for defense applications.
Lyft has partnered with Curb, a ride-hailing platform for licensed taxis. Under the deal, Lyft riders will be connected with Curb’s network of drivers through an integration with the Curb Flow platform, which is already in Los Angeles. Other cities will soon follow.
Rad Power Bikes, one of the more popular e-bike companies, may not be long for this world. The company has informed its employees that it will shut down in January if it is unable to find new funding or get acquired, according to an internal staff email viewed by TechCrunch.
Tesla might bring Apple CarPlay to its EVs. But at this point, should it? Meanwhile, the company’s energy storage division is dealing with an expanded recall of its consumer-based Powerwall 2 product after reports of fires.
The Boring Company, an Elon Musk company, is under scrutiny again. This time because of reports that firefighters performing a safety drill at one of The Boring Company’s construction sites in Las Vegas received burns from chemicals used in the tunnel-excavation process. And the controversy doesn’t stop there.
Toyota started production at a new $13.9 billion battery plant in North Carolina. While Toyota has several facilities in the U.S., this is its first battery plant to be built outside of Japan. And it’s not done investing in the U.S. The company said it plans to invest up to $10 billion more than previously expected over the next five years.
Uber has quietly begun piloting in-app video recording for its drivers in India. The ride-hailing company is also seeking more premium customers through new efforts like Uber Ski, which lets riders schedule a vehicle in advance to nearly 40 popular ski destinations in North America and Europe, including Vail in Colorado and Park City in Utah.
Via had its first earnings since it became a publicly traded company, and, welp, it lost money. The tech transit software company reported a loss of $36.9 million in its third quarter, a 73% increase since the same period last year. Its revenue grew to $713 million, an 11% increase YoY.
One more thing …
Remember the poll in last week’s newsletter? I asked which product goal is Tesla most likely to achieve by 2035? The options are based on real goals laid out in Musk’s $1 trillion compensation package:
- 20 million Tesla vehicles delivered
- 10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions
- 1 million robots delivered
- 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation
- None of these will be reached
And y’all are split between two options: Tesla delivering 20 million vehicles, which received 34.7% of the vote, and “None of these will be reached,” which received 32% of the vote.
The one item you seem to agree on is that Tesla is unlikely to deliver on the other three goals. About 9.5% of readers picked the 1 million robots option, 12.6% chose 10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, and 10.5% picked 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation within 10 years.
Note: If you want to participate in our polls, sign up for the Mobility newsletter here!
[ad_2]
Kirsten Korosec
Source link -
Is Waymo Ready for the Icy Streets of Detroit and Denver? It Had Better Be, Because It’s Coming
[ad_1]
Add San Diego and Las Vegas to the list of cities getting the Waymo treatment. The company says those cities should see self-driving Waymo vehicles on the road soon as it launches service there in 2026.
Oh, and also the frequently icy streets of Detroit.
Even though Waymo’s cabs (the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace and Zeekr RT) will be in manual mode with a human driver controlling the car at first, the Google spin-off company will be gearing up for autonomous operations soon in those new locales. Waymo already has driverless operations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona, and is driving with safety drivers in New York City and Denver and in partnership with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. Plans for more autonomous taxi trips include Washington, D.C. and more of the San Francisco Bay Area.
But if the mention of Detroit and Denver alongside the sun-soaked streets of Chandler, Arizona and Santa Monica, California seems out of place, well, it sure is. If Waymo can pull this off, it will be some of the first fully autonomous operations where the roads are slick with wet, slippery ice and visibility is terrible and dark for more hours of the day.
Tesla owners have access to Full Self-Driving mode in all of Tesla’s EVs, and have been a litmus test for autonomous driving in inclement weather outside of the winter-free zones Waymo (along with Amazon’s Zoox in SF and Las Vegas and the now-defunct General Motors-owned Cruise in SF, Phoenix, Miami, Nashville and several Texas cities) has historically operated. As Reddit forums have discussed for the past few years, once the weather gets rough, self-driving mode isn’t much help. As one user urged, “…don’t rely on a robot to drive you in the snow.”
Waymo anticipated concerns and doubts about driving in a place like Detroit known for its “harshest winter” and put out a blog post at the end of last month about driving in all types of weather. It claims its next generation driver tech has trained enough to handle snowy conditions.
Waymo says its AI can notice when there’s snow, slush or ice versus a normal, dry road and adjusts its behavior accordingly. “Each vehicle essentially acts as a mobile weather station, gathering data to inform its own driving decisions and share with the rest of the fleet in the city,” the post reads.
The need to conquer winter was inevitable. The robofleets can only drive around the same SF streets for so long battling the occasional sprinkle and late-night fog bank. Advanced imaging company Ubicept has been preparing imaging tech for more challenging conditions. And wondering when companies like Waymo would want to expand beyond the sun belt and coastal California. As Ubicept co-founder and CTO Tristan Swedish explained in a recent call, challenging scenarios like winter puts vision systems and sensor suites to the test.
“When you move to a more adverse weather scenario there are ways to overcome those challenges using advanced perception systems,” he said, contrasting the ease of summertime autonomous driving in “well-behaved environments” like SF and Vegas.
Swedish noted the trend to add more cameras, radar and LiDAR sensors to fight the limitations of seeing through things like nighttime fog and a snowstorm. But, “the more sensors you have the more likely you have to fail,” he said. “It makes the system less reliable, and more expensive.”
Companies like Ubicept want to deploy an AI-based solution: Software that can separate light from a headlight bouncing off fog or a snow bank versus the road. Humans can’t do that with the naked eye, but with an approach called gated imaging technology, reliable autonomous driving in more places is theoretically possible. “You don’t have to build a new sensor system,” he assured.
But more robotaxis in more places during more times of the year might not be what people want. After a Waymo struck and killed a neighborhood cat in San Francisco last month, a local supervisor introduced a resolution to give counties more say about robotaxi activity. In California companies like Waymo are regulated through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and CA DMV, both state-level entities.
So while winter is coming, don’t expect the autonomous taxis (and the companies that run them) to be ready for it yet.
[ad_2]
Sasha Lekach
Source link -
$10 Waymo Credit for DashPass Members in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
[ad_1]
$10 Waymo Credit for DashPass Members
DoorDash has a new partnership with Waymo to launch an autonomous deliveries, plus a limited-time $10 Waymo promotion for DashPass members in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
From now through the end of the year, DashPass members in these three cities can receive $10 off one Waymo ride per month. A new promotion code will be issued at the start of each month through December 31, 2025. Check your app.
One important thing to note is that this promotion in only valid on weekday, Monday through Friday, for rides booked between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m..
HT: DoC
[ad_2]
DDG
Source link -
Waymo’s Robotaxis Can Now Use the Highway, Speeding Up Longer Trips
[ad_1]
When Google’s self-driving car project began testing in the Bay Area back in 2009, its engineers focused on highways by sending its sensor-laden vehicles cruising down Interstate 280, which runs the length of Silicon Valley’s peninsula.
More than 15 years later, the cars are back on the freeway—this time without drivers. On Tuesday, the project, now an Alphabet subsidiary we all know as Waymo, announced that its robotaxi service would now drive on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
The new service marks another technical leap for Waymo, whose robotaxis currently serve five US metros: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company says it will launch in several other US and international cities next year, including Dallas, Miami, Nashville, Las Vegas, Detroit, and London.
Waymo also announced Wednesday that it would begin curbside pickup and drop-off service at San Jose Mineta International Airport, allowing passengers to, theoretically, travel autonomously all the way from San Francisco to San Jose—a service area of some 260 square miles. Waymo has been offering its autonomous taxi service on area service roads since the summer of 2023, but the new freeway service could cut in half the time it takes for a robotaxi to travel from San Francisco to Mountain View, Waymo user experience researcher Naomi Guthrie says.
“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov told reporters last week. Highways are predictable, with (mostly) clear signs and lane lines, and a limited set of vehicles and players (trucks, cars, motorcycles, trailers) that a vehicle’s software must learn to recognize and predict. But Waymo executives said that, despite a year of employee- and guest-only highway testing, safety emergencies on highways are relatively rare, so the team was unable to collect as much real-world data as it needed to train its vehicles to operate safely there. Complicating the project was the fact that highway crashes, at high speeds, are subject to the laws of phsyics—and so more likely to maim or kill.
To get ready for highways, Waymo executives say, engineers supplemented real-world driving data and training with data collected on private, closed courses, and data created in simulations. Two onboard computers help create system “redundancies,” meaning the vehicles will have computer backup if something goes wrong. The vehicles have been trained to exit highways in the case of emergencies, but will be able to pull over as well. Waymo execs also say they have and will work with law enforcement and first responders, including highway patrols, to create procedures for vehicles and riders stranded on highway shoulders, where hundreds of Americans are killed every year.
[ad_2]
Aarian Marshall
Source link -
Elon Musk Wades Into the Debate Over Robotaxis Killing Cats. Guess Which Side He’s On
[ad_1]
In between trying to become the world’s first trillionaire, expanding his defense contracting business, fighting the “woke mind virus,” feuding with Sam Altman, and overseeing half a dozen tech companies, Elon Musk has somehow found the time to wade into the debate over whether it’s good or bad that a rogue Waymo robotaxi (by the company’s own admission) seems to have run over and killed a beloved bodega cat in San Francisco.
In case you somehow missed it, a cat was run over earlier this week, leading to ongoing anger against the reputed culprit (Waymo). The feline, whose name was KitKat—but who also went by the moniker “the mayor of 16th street”—was a longtime staple of Randa’s Market in the city’s Mission neighborhood. KitKat’s owner, Mike Zeidan, told The San Francisco Standard that his pet was hit by a robotaxi late Monday night. “Honestly, man, it’s difficult,” Zeidan said. “He was a one-of-a-kind cat. He brought joy to so many people. People loved him.”
Waymo seems to have admitted that its vehicle did, indeed, run over KitKat. “We reviewed this, and while our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away,” a company spokesperson told Gizmodo. “We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him.”
On Friday, as a means of adding his two cents, Musk retweeted an account that had defended driverless cars as being a savior, not a killer, of neighborhood pets. “5.4 million cats are hit by cars every year in the U.S., and 97 percent of those cats die from their injuries,” @WholeMarsBlog wrote. “Autonomy will dramatically reduce that number.”
“True, many pets will be saved by autonomy,” Musk commented.
It’s great that Elon could take time out of his busy schedule to participate in the discourse around KitKat. Big picture, Musk is launching a robotaxi service, so we all know which dog he has in this fight. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know if autonomous cars would reduce the number of feline deaths.
One of the primary selling points for robotaxis has been that human drivers are notorious for running into things, crashing, and otherwise causing dangerous mayhem on America’s roadways. And it’s true that human drivers can be absurdly dangerous. That said, the jury is still out on whether robotaxis are actually that much safer than human drivers. Speed is a factor in a significant portion of traffic fatalities, and robotaxis have so far steered clear of those speeds. At the same time, there’s also the fact that, whether robotaxis are safer or not, part of living in a free society involves accepting a certain amount of risk attached to that freedom. Currently, anyone can get into a car and drive it where they want to go, regardless of what the software in the car is programmed to do. That won’t necessarily be the case in a world governed by robotaxis.
[ad_2]
Lucas Ropek
Source link -
Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana on What’s Next: Highways, Airports, New Cities
[ad_1]
Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, speaks onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 on Oct. 27, 2025 in San Francisco. Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch Waymo, the self-driving company owned by Alphabet, is soon hitting the highways. Operating on highways is just one part of a rapid expansion plan that includes moving to six U.S. cities, entering international markets and launching service at airports—all while maintaining a focus on safety above all else.
“It is imperative that we scale,” said Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, while speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 today (Oct. 27). Mawakana said Waymo plans to increase its weekly autonomous rides from the “hundreds of thousands” to one million by the end of 2026. The company already operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin, but hopes to more than double its footprint by expanding into Miami, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Nashville and Washington, D.C.
Waymo will begin operations in Miami early next year, Mawakana said. Timelines for other cities will depend on local regulatory readiness. In some markets, Waymo will “just show up and they’ll launch,” she said. Others, like Washington D.C., will require more groundwork before fully autonomous rides can roll out.
The company is also setting its sights overseas. Last year, Waymo announced plans to test operations in Tokyo through partnerships with taxi firms GO and Nihon Kotsu, using human-driven cars to train its technology in the city’s dense urban environment. London is next: the company revealed earlier this month that it will begin offering fully autonomous rides there in 2026.
Waymo’s expansion isn’t limited to geography—it’s moving onto new types of roads. Until now, its vehicles have been restricted mostly to surface streets. But the company has begun highway testing through employee trials in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. “We think it’s really important to conceptualize the ways in which that experience is different than surface streets,” said Mawakana, adding that highway rides will open to the public by year’s end.
The move to highways will also make it easier for Waymo to facilitate airport trips—a category that the company is “super focused” on, according to Mawakana. Waymo has already secured permits to operate at airports in San Francisco and San Jose and hopes to add more as its vehicles become a more common sight on highways.
Unlocking more roads raises the stakes for safety. Waymo, which publishes its safety data online, reports that its vehicles are involved in 91 percent fewer high-severity crashes, 78 percent fewer airbag-deployment crashes and 80 percent fewer injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers. If that record began to slip, Mawakana said the company would “absolutely” slow its expansion. “That’s what it means to be a safety-first culture.”
Part of that culture, she added, is being transparent about the limits of the technology. “I’m not telling you 100 percent across the board, and that’s really important,” said Mawakana. “We have to be in this open and honest dialogue about the fact that we know it’s not perfection.”
[ad_2]
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
Source link -
Robotaxi companies must do more to prove safety, Waymo co-CEO says | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
Waymo co-CEO Takedra Mawakana believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe, she said during an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Mawakana had just been asked who she considered to be on the list of companies trying to make roads safer during Monday’s interview.
“I don’t know who’s on that list, because they’re not telling us what’s happening with their fleets,” she said.
Prioritizing safety while scaling operations was a big topic during the interview, and Mawakana was sure to cite the data Waymo recently released that shows, by its count, that the company’s vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer with respect to pedestrians.
Mawakana declined to say whether she was specifically talking about Tesla, but there are only a few companies in the U.S. right now claiming to be working on robotaxi tech.
Tesla publishes quarterly “vehicle safety reports.” But that data only focuses on the use of the company’s Autopilot driver assistance technology, which is designed to be used on highways, where the rate of crashes is lower than on surface streets. (And the latest report shows an uptick in crashes.) Tesla has not released any public data about the safety of its nascent robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.
Other companies in the space are early in the deployment phase or still testing their technology. Zoox has only just begun offering rides in its purpose-built AV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Companies like May Mobility and Pony AI have yet to launch commercially in the U.S. Aurora, the self-driving trucks company, has published a safety framework.
“I think there is a responsibility, if you’re going to put vehicles on the road, and you’re going to remove the driver from behind the wheel, and you’re going to have someone in some other room observing the fleet who can take over their vehicles, it is incumbent upon you to be transparent about what’s happening,” she said. “And if you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the road safer.”
[ad_2]
Sean O’Kane
Source link -
TechCrunch Mobility: The ‘robot army’ argument | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
I am sure you are waiting to learn the results of last week’s poll. (Reminder: Sign up for the Mobility newsletter to participate in our polls!) Here is what I asked: “What is the best business model for autonomous vehicle tech? (Keep profitability in mind.)”
Far and away, readers think longer-haul delivery is the best bet, with 40% picking this option. Robotaxis came in next with 25.5% of the vote, followed by licensing tech to automakers at 19.1% and last-mile delivery with 14.9%. One reader emailed to point out that I didn’t include warehouse applications like autonomous forklifts. The longer-haul delivery category can be broken down further, though, and is worth another poll, which we included in this week’s newsletter.
In the long list of arguments one might make to justify a $1 trillion compensation package, having control over a robot army was certainly not on my mind. And yet, this is the argument Elon Musk made during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call.
Here’s the rundown: On November 6, shareholders will vote whether to approve a board-endorsed compensation package that would grant Musk up to 12% of Tesla’s stock. If the company hits its target market value of $8.6 trillion, that package would be worth about $1 trillion.
The board and Musk have spent weeks lobbying shareholders to approve the measure, even as proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have recommended that investors reject it. Musk is now in attack mode, which was on display at the end of the earnings call when he called the firms corporate terrorists and made his final pitch. His robot army argument centers on power and control, not so much money. Although, hey, money can provide both.
“My biggest concern line: If we build this robot army, do I have a strong influence over that robot army? I don’t feel comfortable building a robot army if I don’t have a strong influence,” Musk said during the earnings call. He was referring to Tesla’s Optimus robot program and used it as an example of products he wants full control over.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025That argument will hardly persuade Musk’s critics, particularly in the wake of his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. But Musk doesn’t need to convince his growing list of critics, unless, of course, they own Tesla shares.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin This week, General Motors dropped the ax on the BrightDrop electric van program after four short years. It was not the biggest surprise in the world; after all, hundreds of unsold vans have been sitting untouched in lots in Michigan and Canada for months now. (One little bird reached out to tell us that hundreds of them are in a lot in Flint, Michigan.) GM cited a slower-than-expected market for commercial electric vans, but it didn’t go into detail about why, exactly, BrightDrop failed so miserably.
Another little bird has given us a clue, though. The vans are pricey but well-liked and should save fleet owners money over time. And electric drivetrains are a great fit for last-mile delivery. What GM appears to have missed was the infrastructure piece, according to one insider. The company leaned hard on outside partnerships to build out so-called depot charging, instead of offering it as part of the fleet purchases. That turned a number of potential customers away and just generally caused headaches.
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Deals!
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin The big deal this week is about EVs and AI data centers. Yes, there is a connection.
Redwood Materials raised $350 million in a Series E round led by venture firm Eclipse, and included a new strategic investment by Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures. The company’s valuation was not disclosed, but a source familiar with the round told TechCrunch it was about $6 billion, a billion dollars higher than its previous valuation.
The chunk of this money is going toward Redwood’s new energy storage business, which is giving a new purpose to EV batteries it has collected and that have too much life left to put through the recycling process. The company ties these retired EV batteries to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, or the grid, to power AI data centers or industrial sites.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Avride secured strategic investments and other commitments of up to $375 million, backed by Uber and Nebius. None of these companies gave me specifics when asked if this was all equity. One insider did say to pay attention to the “other commitments” bit, which suggests it was not a straight cash injection.
Spiro, the African electric motorbike startup headquartered in Dubai, raised $100 million in a round led by the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the development arm of Afreximbank. This is the largest raise ever for African e-mobility.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin General Motors made several announcements at an event in NYC that were meant to show where it’s headed. And, yes, AI plays a central role. Before AI could take the stage, GM said it will overhaul the electrical and computational guts of its future vehicles. The company will roll out a new electric architecture and centralized computing platform in new vehicles, starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028. That foundation will allow the company to deliver faster software; more capable automated driving features, including eyes-off driving; and a custom, conversational AI assistant.
Earnings season is upon us, and this quarter I am watching for data and executive commentary that helps me understand how tariffs and the expired EV tax credit are affecting the automotive sector. I don’t have any clear takeaways yet — and probably won’t until the next quarter.
Tariffs are hitting, Q3 reports from GM and Ford indicate. For instance, GM forecast that tariffs will reduce its 2025 profits by $2.3 billion and Ford said it would take a $2 billion bite out of the bottom line. But both of those projections are billions of dollars better than the automakers predicted earlier this year, and the automakers hope to offset those costs. CEOs from both automakers thanked President Trump for extending a relief measure from tariffs on automotive parts sourced from Canada and Mexico.
Some other GM and Ford news: Ford will continue to pause production of its F-150 Lightning trucks as it prioritizes gas and hybrid F-Series versions in a bid to recover from a fire at its primary aluminum supplier Nevolis. Meanwhile, GM CEO Mary Barra told the Verge’s Decoder podcast that the company will drop support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from all of its vehicles. Oh, and late-breaking: GM has laid off 200 salaried workers from its Warren Tech Center.
Tesla delivered a record number of vehicles in the third quarter of 2025, results buoyed by U.S. customers who took advantage of the expiring federal EV tax credit. That didn’t translate to greater earnings. Tesla’s third-quarter profit was $1.4 billion, 37% lower than it was in the same quarter last year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation after seeing footage from early October of a Waymo autonomous vehicle maneuvering around a stopped school bus that was unloading kids in Atlanta.
Rivian is undergoing a bit of a shake-up that includes cutting 600 people from its workforce (its third round of layoffs this year), and its founder and CEO is taking on yet another position: chief marketing officer. Rivian also agreed this week to pay $250 million to settle a class-action shareholder lawsuit filed after the company suddenly hiked prices on its R1 pickup truck and SUV in 2022.
Meanwhile, I spent some time in the Bay Area with executives from Rivian’s micromobility spinout company Also. The company revealed three new products, and if Also president Chris Yu and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe (and Also board member) are to be believed, there will be even more coming. For now, it’s a slick modular pedal-assist e-bike and two pedal-assist quad vehicles — the delivery van version that Amazon has already agreed to buy. The big compelling tech story here is vertical integration and software.
[ad_2]
Kirsten Korosec
Source link -
TechCrunch Mobility: A takeover that might not be hostile | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Want another reason to get this free in your inbox? The emailed version of this newsletter includes polls, including one this week that asks readers what they think the best business model is for autonomous vehicle technology. Have an opinion about this? Email me your opinion at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com with the subject line “AV poll.”
OK, back to the show. There’s another twist in the road for lidar company Luminar. And yes, it includes some inside-the-boardroom intrigue.
First, let’s catch up. You might recall that Austin Russell, the billionaire founder and CEO of Luminar, was more or less pushed out of the company by its board following an ethics inquiry. But Russell didn’t go quietly into the night.
He popped back up on our radar a few weeks ago with the launch of a new company called Russell AI Labs. And now (cue the deep and foreboding “dum dum duuuuummmm”): He has made a bid to acquire Luminar.
Senior reporter Sean O’Kane broke the story, which you can read here. He has since learned a few more details beyond what is disclosed in the SEC filing.
This may look like a possible hostile move — it was, after all, disclosed in a filing from Russell, and Luminar is not commenting on the proposal. But we’ve learned from a source that members of Luminar’s board approached the founder about the idea last month. (The word we were told was they “encouraged” it.)
The implication here is that some of Luminar’s nine-member board really does want him back, despite the fact that three of those board members on the audit committee conducted an ethics inquiry into him just a few months ago, leading to his resignation.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025The proposed takeover as described in the filing is vague, but it could involve Russell AI Labs acquiring a different automotive tech company and merging it with Luminar. Since this morning, we’ve heard Russell is already trained on a few options as part of the diligence he’s done with Russell AI Labs, which he views as an incubator of sorts.
Deals!
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin Two notable deals this week occurred in the electric aviation sector.
First up is Beta Technologies, which took advantage of eased SEC rules during the U.S. government shutdown to price shares for its initial public offering. The shares are priced between $27 and $33, in hopes of raising as much as $825 million. If the company attracts investors at the top of that range, it will debut with a valuation of about $7.2 billion.
The SEC issued guidance earlier this month that lets companies in IPO limbo allow their statements on certain areas, including share price, to become automatically effective after 20 days, even without SEC staff review. Several other companies, including Navan, have pressed ahead with IPO plans under this rule.
And there is Lilium, which was involved in a very different kind of deal. The electric aircraft startup may have ceased operations a year ago, but its tech is living on over at Archer Aviation.
Archer won a competitive bidding process — one that Ambitious Air Mobility Group and Joby Aviation also participated in — and bought all 300 of Lilium’s patents. The price, €18 million ($21 million), is a stunning number when compared to the more than $1 billion the defunct startup raised over its lifetime.
The question is what does Archer plan to do with these patents? The company isn’t explicit, but there are some hints, which you can read about in my story.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Airbound, an Indian drone startup founded in 2020, raised $8.65 million in seed funding led by Physical Intelligence co-founder Lachy Groom. Humba Ventures and Airbound’s existing investor, Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as senior leaders at Tesla, SpaceX, and Anduril, joined.
Dexory, a warehouse robotics startup based in London, raised $165 million in equity and debt. The $100 million Series C round was led by Eurazeo with participation from backers LTS Growth, Endeavor Catalyst, DTCP, Atomico, Lakestar, Elaia, Latitude Ventures, and Wave-X. The company also secured $65 million in debt financing from Bootstrap Europe.
FleetWorks, a logistics startup developing an “always-on” AI dispatcher, raised $17 million in equity and debt, including a $15 million Series A round led by First Round Capital’s Bill Trenchard. Y Combinator, Saga Ventures, and LFX Venture Partners also participated in the FleetWorks Series A.
Pony.ai and WeRide have received a key approval from Chinese securities regulators that clears the way for the autonomous vehicle technology companies to pursue secondary listings on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. The Chinese companies are already publicly traded in the U.S. on the Nasdaq Exchange.
Starship Technologies, the autonomous sidewalk delivery startup, raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Plural. Karma.vc, Latitude, Coefficient Capital, SmartCap, and Skaala also joined.
Upciti, a Paris-based smart city software company, raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Notion Capital. Other investors included Point Nine and Chalfen Ventures.
Zepto, the Indian grocery delivery company, raised $450 million in funding ahead of a public listing set, Bloomberg reported.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin The National Transportation Safety Board has weighed in on OceanGate, the disaster that killed five people during a voyage to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The NTSB issued a report that found the Titan submersible did not meet manufacturing safety standards.
Stellantis and Chinese autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai are working together to build robotaxis for use in Europe, albeit via a nonbinding agreement. The plan is to integrate Pony’s self-driving software into Stellantis’ electric medium-size van platform.
While Stellantis delves into autonomous vehicle tech, it is pulling back on electrification. The automaker said it will invest $13 billion to beef up its U.S. manufacturing over the next four years. (This plan hasn’t been well received by labor unions in Canada, by the way.) Five new vehicles will be developed and produced through 2029 as part of the investment into factories in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Only one of those will be electrified, a marked difference from Stellantis’ strategy a few years ago.
Uber is offering a new kind of gig work: digital tasks like uploading photos to help train AI models.
Waymo is expanding to London. The company said it will offer a commercial robotaxi service in London in 2026, marking the Alphabet-owned company’s second international expansion following Tokyo.
As per usual, there was more than one piece of Waymo news. The company locked in a strategic multiyear agreement with DoorDash to deliver goods to customers in the Phoenix area using driverless vehicles. It’s been a while since Waymo has experimented with delivery. Is this a hint of what’s to come? I believe it is.
One more thing …
Speaking of Waymo and delivery, it got me thinking about what the best business model is. It’s been a minute since we’ve had a poll, so I hope you participate if you sign up for the newsletter. I will share the results next week.
[ad_2]
Kirsten Korosec
Source link -
Should AI do everything? OpenAI thinks so | TechCrunch
[ad_1]
Silicon Valley’s rule? It’s not cool to be cautious. As OpenAI removes guardrails and VCs criticize companies like Anthropic for supporting AI safety regulations, it’s becoming clearer who the industry thinks should shape AI development.
On this episode of Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Max Zeff discuss how the line between innovation and responsibility is getting blurrier, plus what happens when pranks go from digital to physical.
Watch to the full episode for more about:
- Why advocating for AI safety has become “uncool” in Silicon Valley from Anthropic facing backlash to California’s SB 243 regulation of AI companion chatbots and the success of companies like Character.AI
- Which startups are using an SEC workaround to file for IPOs during the shutdown
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
[ad_2]
Theresa Loconsolo
Source link -
Waymo will also drive for DoorDash in Phoenix
[ad_1]
Waymo has announced a new partnership with DoorDash that will make the company’s self-driving cars a delivery option for users in Phoenix, Arizona. You can already hail a ride in Waymo’s Arizona service area, but this new partnership will give the company’s cars something to do when they’re not transporting human cargo.
To start, Waymo says that deliveries will be limited to things you can order through DashMart, DoorDash’s storefront for convenience and grocery stores. Eventually, though, deliveries will “include more local Phoenix merchants and a wider variety of offerings.”
In order to try out a Waymo delivery, you’ll have to place your order through DoorDash and “opt in to autonomous delivery” during checkout. Once Waymo’s car arrives, much like DoorDash’s Dot robot, you’ll then have to physically leave your home and collect your order from the car’s trunk to complete the delivery. Part of the convenience (and complication) of DoorDash is getting what you ordered brought to your door. A Waymo delivery might turn some people off, since it makes that option impossible.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Waymo has delivered food in Phoenix. In 2024 the company partnered with Uber Eats for a similar program, with similar limitations around how deliveries were completed and where food could be ordered from. Waymo runs its own robotaxi service in Arizona, Waymo One, but depending on the region, it’s also offered rides through third-party partners like Uber. Its partnerships with Uber Eats and DoorDash seem like variations on the same idea.
In 2020, Waymo was exploring using self-driving long-haul trucks for deliveries. The company abandoned those plans in 2023 to prioritize robotaxis and the Waymo Driver software, but these tests with DoorDash and Uber Eats could be a signal that Waymo is interested in pursuing deliveries on a smaller scale.
[ad_2]
