Down and out in the uncanny valley. Read More
Tag: self driving cars
Tesla and the moral hazard of self-driving cars
Who is responsible for a crash on Tesla’s “Autopilot”? Read More
Legislation would mandate driver-monitoring tech in every car
Enlarge / A woman test drives Cadillac’s Super Cruise hands-free driver-assistance feature in 2018. Super Cruise includes a camera-based eye-tracking technology to ensure drivers are watching the road. (credit: Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for Cadillac) Three United States senators on Monday proposed legislation that would require all new cars in the United States to have driver-monitoring […]
Who will win the self-driving race? Here are eight possibilities
Enlarge (credit: Emanuel M Schwermer) The self-driving technology industry is in a strange state right now. A number of companies have been pouring millions of dollars into self-driving technology for years, and many of them have prototype self-driving vehicles that seem to work. Yet I know of only one company—Waymo—that has launched a fully driverless […]
The largest independent self-driving startup is under a lot of pressure
Enlarge / Chris Urmson speaks onstage during the 2019 SXSW Conference on March 9, 2019 in Austin. (credit: Samantha Burkardt/Getty Images for SXSW) Few people have been working on self-driving cars longer than Chris Urmson. Urmson played a key role on Carnegie Mellon’s team in all three of DARPA’s famous Grand Challenges between 2004 and […]
Chinese demand powers knockout Daimler profits as German auto stocks make a big comeback
Profitability was strong in all areas of its business, but particularly impressed at its core light vehicles division, where a rising tide of demand lifted results already buoyed by emergency cost cutting undertaken last year. Read More
Mercedes-Benz unveils the new EQS sedan, its flagship electric car
Mercedes unveils it’s luxury battery-powered sedan, priced at over $100,000 and likely to reach U.S. showrooms by the end of summer. Read More
Waymo CEO John Krafcik steps down
Enlarge / Waymo CEO John Krafcik in 2017. (credit: Misha Friedman/Bloomberg via Getty Images) John Krafcik, the former auto industry exec who took over Google’s self-driving car project in 2015, is stepping down as CEO of Waymo. Waymo, which spun off as a separate Alphabet subsidiary in 2016, accomplished a lot during Krafcik’s five-and-a-half-year tenure. […]
Self-driving startups are becoming an endangered species
Enlarge / A Voyage vehicle at the Villages in Florida. (credit: Voyage) Bloomberg reports that Cruise, a self-driving company jointly owned by GM and Honda, is in talks to acquire the startup Voyage. Founded four years ago, Voyage is working to launch a self-driving taxi service at the Villages, a massive retirement community in Florida. […]
Sidewalk-robot startup celebrates 1 million deliveries
Enlarge / Annika Keeton. (credit: Starship) Last March, just as the Washington, DC, area was locking down for COVID-19, I traveled to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, to eat a hamburger delivered by a robot. The robot was owned by delivery startup Starship. Today, Starship announced it has completed 1 million deliveries. Annika Keeton, a […]