Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt confirmed reports that the self-driving robotaxi maker needs regular human intervention to help them make sense of the road, yet he is downplaying the severity. A New York Times story cited unnamed Cruise employees claimed the company’s robotaxis required human help every 2.5 to five miles and had a support staff …
A Cruise robotaxi blocked a San Francisco ambulance from getting a pedestrian hit by a vehicle to the hospital in an Aug. 14 incident, according to first responder accounts. The patient later died of their injuries. Above is a photo of a different Cruise incident where a Firetruck hit a Cruise. Have not found a …
I, Brian Wang, talked to Herbert Ong about the problem with the Waymo and Cruise and robotaxi business model. They both have been losing about $2-3 billion per year for the past five years and were losing $1 billion per year before. Waymo started in 2009 and Cruise started in 2013. Waymo has probably has …
California Public Utilities Commission have voted to allow the Waymo and Cruise to expand their robotaxi service to thousands of vehicles in San Francisco. Before expansion Google-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise were limited in times and areas they could operate. Cruise cars can only be accessed 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the Sunset, …
Ark Invests described how compute and data are the keys to self driving (autonomy). Tesla has both large amounts of compute and driving data. Waymo and Cruise have 100 to 1000 times less driving data than Tesla. Tesla probabably has 10x more compute and will scale to 200X more compute. Waymo and Cruise are likely …
For years, Alphabet’s Waymo, Tesla and others leaders have promised autonomous vehicles will be here soon. However, we are currently short of the promised robotaxi capabilities. Here is a summary of the current situation. Tesla Full self-driving beta for city streets to roughly 400,000 customers in North America. FSD is bought by about 10% of …
Robotaxis on public streets are causing dozens of problems each month for firetrucks, ambulances and police cars and city traffic. California state agencies have set up the rules where city leaders cannot block autonomous vehicle regulation. San Francisco and Los Angeles are fighting the expansion of robotaxi operations. Thee Los Angeles Department of Transportation and …
Alphabet’s Waymo , self-driving company, has laid off 8% (209 employees) of its workforce. The layoffs — mostly engineering roles — are part of a broader organizational restructure. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News …
I have researched the major self driving car companies. We know Argo AI failed. They were ranked 5th in California based upon disengagement miles. Disengagement miles is a misleading statistic. It is only somewhat predictive. Argo had $4 billion or so of funding and 2100 employees. Ford after pulling the plug said Argo was over …
Waymo has been testing self-driving cars without any safety drivers in Phoenix for nearly a year. Waymo will launch the first commercial program in Phoenix within months. They have applied California regulators to begin testing without safety drivers. The commercial self-driving in California will likely start in 2019. Waymo is buying 62,000 plug-in hybrid Pacifica …
Google’s Waymo should have 20,000 self-driving cars giving rides by 2023. Those self-driving cars could be driving a billion miles every year. Currently Waymo passed 5 million self-driving miles in February, 2018. For Deep learning artificial intelligence, the key to better performance is getting to a billion or more examples. Waymo is already in the …