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 …
Read More »Japan Launches a Development Project for Self-Driving EV Taxis
This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese. A project to develop autonomous vehicles for self-driving taxis has begun in earnest in Japan. The plan put forward by Tier IV, a startup specializing in autonomous-driving technology, has been selected for a demonstration project by the …
Read More »Toyota Pulls Off a Fast and Furious Demo With Dual Drifting AI-Powered Race Cars
Losing traction while driving at high speed is generally very bad news. Scientists from the Toyota Research Institute and Stanford University have developed a pair of self-driving cars that use artificial intelligence to do it in a controlled fashion—a trick better known as “drifting”—to push the limits of autonomous driving. …
Read More »Waymo Is Suing People Who Allegedly Smashed and Slashed Its Robotaxis
The people of San Francisco haven’t always been kind to Waymo’s growing fleet of driverless taxis. The autonomous vehicles, which provide tens of thousands of rides each week, have been torched, stomped on, and verbally berated in recent months. Now Waymo is striking back—in the courts. This month, the Silicon …
Read More »Tesla Autopilot Was Uniquely Risky—and May Still Be
A federal report published today found that Tesla’s Autopilot system was involved in at least 13 fatal crashes in which drivers misused the system in ways the automaker should have foreseen—and done more to prevent. Not only that, but the report called out Tesla as an “industry outlier” because its …
Read More »China’s Best Self-Driving Car Platforms, Tested and Compared
We're still waiting for the full promise of self-driving cars to be realized. After all, fleshy, unreliable humans are killing more people than ever on US roads. And now Apple fans could be waiting indefinitely as poor Project Titan has been killed off after its owner gave up on human-free …
Read More »Waymo Will Bring Autonomous Taxis to Los Angeles—Its Biggest Challenge Yet
Paid autonomous vehicle service is coming to Los Angeles, thanks to a decision by California regulators today to allow Alphabet subsidiary Waymo to operate in the city. Under the new ruling, Waymo is also permitted to launch service in a large section of the San Francisco Peninsula. The decision by …
Read More »RIP Apple Car. This Is Why It Died
After a decade of rumors, secretive developments, executive entrances and exits, and pivots, Apple reportedly told employees yesterday that its car project, internally called “Project Titan,” is no more. Those working on the technology of some four-odd hype cycles ago—electric, autonomous vehicles—will reportedly now focus on the vaunted advancement of …
Read More »How to Guarantee the Safety of Autonomous Vehicles
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Driverless cars and planes are no longer the stuff of the future. In the city of San Francisco alone, two taxi companies have collectively logged 8 million miles of autonomous driving through August 2023. And more than 850,000 autonomous aerial …
Read More »Apple Ramped Up Autonomous Vehicle Testing Last Year, Filings Show
Apple’s secretive vehicle project doesn’t have much to show for its six years of work, at least publicly. But records submitted by the company to a California agency show that Apple went on an autonomous testing jag last year, almost quadrupling the number of miles it tested on public roads …
Read More »