- California clears way for driverless taxis in San Francisco Financial Times
- California regulators approve expansion of robotaxi services in San Francisco KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco
- California regulators approve expansion of driverless robotaxi car service KTLA 5
- Commentary: Waymo and Cruise are Driven by Money, Not Safety – Streetsblog San Francisco Streetsblog San Francisco
- Teamsters Condemn CPUC for Expansion of Robotaxis in San Francisco, Undemocratic Process Catering to Big Tech International Brotherhood of Teamsters
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: driverless
Shenzhen accelerates China’s driverless car dreams
SHENZHEN, China, Aug 1 (Reuters) – On a busy downtown street three delivery bikes suddenly dart over the pedestrian crossing ahead of the car. On the car’s dashboard they look like small 3D blue blocks from a 1990s video game.
The steering wheel turns itself a notch and the vehicle slows to a gentle halt, while the safety driver looks on from the passenger seat.
The vehicle is one of a hundred sensor-laden robotaxis belonging to start up DeepRoute.ai cruising the dense central Futian business district in China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen, giving 50,000 trial rides to passengers in the last year.
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While the United States is regarded as taking an early lead in testing autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, in Shenzhen the industry appears to be changing gears, with trial robotaxis fast becoming a common sight.
Baidu Inc’s Apollo unit, Toyota Motor Corp-backed Pony, Nissan-backed Weride, Alibaba-backed Auto X and Deeproute have all been running trials navigating the city’s difficult environment, with frequent jaywalkers and ubiquitous e-scooters.
Shenzhen, a city of 18 million, has now brought in China’s clearest AV regulations. From Monday registered AVs will be allowed to operate without a driver in the driving seat across a broad swath of the city, but a driver must still be present in the vehicle.
So far, Chinese cities have allowed robotaxis to operate on a more limited basis with permission of local authorities, but Shenzhen’s regulations for the first time provide a crucial framework for liability in the event of an accident.
If the AV has a driver behind the wheel, the driver will be liable in an accident. If the car is completely driverless, the owner of the vehicle will be responsible. If a defect causes an accident, the car owner can seek compensation from the manufacturer.
“If you want more cars, eventually there will be accidents, so these regulations are very important for mass deployment,” said Maxwell Zhou, DeepRoute’s CEO, speaking at the company’s offices in a tech park near the Hong Kong border.
“This is not true driverless but it’s a big milestone.”
GEAR SHIFT
So far the United States has raced ahead in AV trials, with California greenlighting public-road tests from 2014, allowing Alphabet Inc’s Waymo LLC, Cruise and Tesla to rack up millions of miles in road testing.
But China has its foot on the accelerator, with Beijing making AV a key area in its latest five year plan. Shenzhen wants its smart vehicle industry to reach revenues of 200 billion yuan by 2025.
In May last year Cruise Chief Executive Dan Amann warned President Joe Biden that U.S. safety regulations risked the country’s AV industry falling behind China, with the latter’s “top down, centrally directed approach”.
A safety driver sits on the passenger seat as the car with autonomous driving system by DeepRoute.ai, drives itself on a street in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China July 29, 2022. REUTERS/David Kirton
Deeproute aims to have 1,000 robotaxis with safety drivers on Shenzhen’s roads in the next few years, when more detailed regulations are expected.
But in a city with a state-owned fleet of 22,000 electric taxis from Shenzhen-based BYD, where a 20-km (12-mile) trip costs about 60 yuan ($9), production costs for AVs will need to come down before robotaxis are commercially viable, Zhou said.
Deeproute and other robotaxi companies are banking on mass production to lower costs and gather data. Deeproute sells its driving solutions to carmarkers for around $3,000.
Zhou looks to Shenzhen’s DJI Technology Co as a role model, with the company utilising lower hardware costs and integrated supply chains to make it the dominant player in the commercial drone space worldwide.
On July 21 Baidu announced a new AV with a detachable steering wheel it will use for robotaxis next year, at 250,000 yuan a unit, almost half the price of its previous generation.
“We are moving towards a future where taking a robotaxi will be half the cost of taking a taxi today,” Baidu’s chief executive Robin Li said at the Baidu World conference.
FROGS IN A WELL
Shenzhen’s supply chain and lower costs give it a major production advantage over Silicon Valley, but AV solution maker David Chang does not want to be constrained to one market.
“In Shenzhen the capital cost is one third to California, because we have the battery suppliers, we have the sensors, we have most of the integration,” said the CEO and founder of Shenzhen-based Whale Dynamic.
“But the revenue is one twelfth to California, so it might not be a fancy business to do,” he said.
Deeproute, Weride and Pony.ai also have offices in Silicon Valley, with R&D teams and testing in both locations.
“We don’t want to shrink ourselves into a well and fight with other frogs. We want to jump out of that well,” said Chang.
($1 = 6.7433 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(This story refiles to correct spelling in paragraph 4 to sight (not site))
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Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Michael Perry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Driverless Car Stopped In San Francisco Baffles Cops
The police officer’s encounter with the self-driving car was captured on film by a passerby.
San Francisco:
San Francisco police faced an unprecedented problem recently when an officer stopped a car that was driving at night with no headlights on, only to discover there was no one inside.
The vehicle, it turned out, was a self-driving car, and the police officer’s encounter was captured on film by a passerby, who posted the footage on social media.
The clip, showing bemused officers circling the vehicle and peering through its window for several minutes, has been shared so widely that Cruise, the company that owns the vehicle, reacted on Twitter to explain what had happened.
It said the self-driving car “yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued.”
In the footage, as the police are inspecting the parked vehicle, someone can be heard exclaiming, “There’s no one in it, it’s crazy!”
A police spokesperson said that after the police had stopped the car, a maintenance team had taken control of it.
Cruise explained that the headlights were turned off due to human error.
Founded in 2013, Cruise has developed software that allows cars to drive themselves completely autonomously.
The US manufacturer General Motors owns the majority of shares in the company, valued at more than $30 billion thanks to investments by giants such as Microsoft, Honda and Walmart.
Since February, Cruise has passed a key threshold in offering individuals the chance to book free trips in the streets of San Francisco in its driverless cars.
Residents of the Californian city also regularly come across robo-taxis from Waymo, Google’s self-driving subsidiary.
These camera-clad vehicles take passengers wherever they want, with a driver who is present but does not touch the steering wheel or the pedals.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Driverless car pulled over by San Francisco police
Cops pull over driverless car in San Francisco
San Francisco police made an unusual traffic stop recently when an officer pulled over a driverless car.
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco police made an unusual traffic stop recently when an officer pulled over a driverless car.
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed the incident happened April 1 on Clement Street in the city’s Officers initially pulled the self-driving cruise vehicle over for not having it’s headlights on while driving after 10pm.
Richmond District.
Video obtained by KTVU shows an officer walking to what would be the driver-side window of a Cruise car only to find that no one was at the steering wheel.
After the car came to a stop and the officer walks back to the patrol car, the Cruise vehicle drives ahead through the intersection before pulling to the side again and turning on its hazard lights.
Driverless car pulled over by San Francisco police
An autonomous vehicle owned by Cruise was pulled over by a San Francisco police officer in this video shared with KTVU by @b.rad916. Cruise said that police did not issue a citation during the stop.
Cruise said its car rolled forward to find a safer place to stop.
“Our AV [autonomous vehicle] yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop, as intended,” Cruise tweeted.
FLASHBACK: Man seen riding in the back seat of Tesla with no driver on Bay Area roads
Onlookers can be seen and heard reveling in the scene on Clement Street in the Richmond neighborhood. The video was posted to Instagram on April 1.
“Ain’t nobody in it,” one man is heard saying.
“Oh my god, I have to watch this,” says a woman.
The officer initially pulled the vehicle over for not having its headlights on while driving after 10 p.m.
In an email to KTVU, Cruise confirmed the vehicle is part of its driverless ride-hail service, which only operates at night between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. The company said the vehicles’ headlights were off due to a human error and the issue has been fixed.
Such stops could foreshadow what happens as more autonomous vehicles take to the streets.
The officer did not issue a ticket, Cruise said.
San Francisco police have not responded to KTVU’s inquiries.
Cruise began offering free rides to passengers in their robotic cars earlier this year.
Watch what happens when police pull over a driverless car in San Francisco
What happens when a driverless car gets pulled over by the police?
Confusion, mostly.
In an Instagram video originally posted April 1, a driverless Cruise car — apparently driving at night without its headlights on — is seen getting pulled over by San Francisco police. As a police officer approaches the driver’s side, he notices… no driver.
As the befuddled officer walks back to his car, the Cruise starts back up and crosses an intersection, before stopping again in front of a restaurant on Clement Street, in the city’s Richmond District. The police car follows, and officers get out and inspect the unoccupied vehicle in more detail, before one makes a call — apparently to Cruise.
“Are you serious? How does that happen?” one bystander is heard saying.
The video was tweeted Saturday by tech journalist Seth Weintraub, which prompted a response Sunday by Cruise — the autonomous-vehicle company that is majority-owned by General Motors Co.
GM,
+1.63%
— which said the car acted properly.
“Our AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued,” the company tweeted, adding that “We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles, including a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this.”
The odd interaction will likely become a more common one, in San Francisco at least.
Earlier this year, Cruise gained regulatory approval to begin its fully driverless, free robotaxi service in certain parts of San Francisco. Alphabet’s
GOOGL,
-1.91%
Waymo has also begun offering fully driverless rides in San Francisco, though only for Waymo employees for the time being.
Video shows what happens when a driverless car gets pulled over
A recent video posted online shows a driverless Cruise car getting pulled over in San Francisco by police who found the autonomous vehicle didn’t have anyone behind the wheel.
In the video posted on April 1, the Cruise car initially pulls over to the side of the road and stops as a cop approached the driver’s side before accelerating to cross an in intersection and pull off further down the road.
“Are you serious? How does that happen?” a bystander yells in the video.
Cruise said on Sunday that the car behaved as expected.
“Our AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued,” Cruise said on its corporate Twitter account.
Cruise told CNBC that the San Francisco Police Department has a dedicated phone number available at all times for officers to call when the company’s driverless vehicles get pulled over. SFPD representatives didn’t immediately return requests for more information.
The humorous episode highlights some of the situations that can occur as driverless cars become more common on city streets.
Cruise, a GM subsidiary, started to offer nighttime rides to the public earlier this year in San Francisco in driverless cars, although it’s not yet charging and riders need to apply for a waitlist.
Waymo, a Alphabet subsidiary, is planning to offer free driverless rides in its cars in San Francisco to members of a testing program, and has completed “tens of thousands” of rides without a driver in Arizona.
Nuro has a deployment permit to operate driverless cars in San Francisco as well, but the startup focuses on delivery, not a taxi service.
GM buys SoftBank’s stake in its driverless car unit Cruise
Here are your FOX Business Flash top headlines for March 18.
General Motors Co. said it is buying out SoftBank Vision Fund L.P.’s stake in its Cruise division for $2.1 billion, roughly four years after the Japanese investment firm joined the car maker in betting on driverless-car technology.
GM also said Friday it will make an additional $1.35 billion investment in GM Cruise Holdings LLC replacing a previous commitment from SoftBank.
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GM’s ownership in Cruise will be about 80% and SoftBank will no longer have an ownership interest in or have any rights with respect to Cruise after the transaction is completed.
FILE PHOTO: A self-driving GM Bolt EV is seen during a media event where Cruise, GM’s autonomous car unit, showed off its self-driving cars in San Francisco, California. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage (Reuters)
Investors for years have speculated that GM could spin off Cruise. Some analysts have questioned whether the abrupt departure in December of Cruise CEO Dan Ammann was a signal that GM wanted to keep the business in-house for longer than investors had anticipated.
GM Chief Executive Mary Barra recently said the Detroit auto maker wants to continue honing the technology and its plans for a future robot-taxi business before making decisions on Cruise’s future. She added, though, that separating Cruise could be on the table at some point in the future.
CALIFORNIA TO TEST ELECTRIC FORDS AND GMS AS BACKUP POWER FOR HOMES
“There’s so much more to do. We can go faster as opposed to looking at a specific opportunity right now,” she said during an investor conference last month.
A Cruise self-driving car in San Francisco. (Andrej Sokolow/dpa / Reuters Photos)
Like many driverless-car developers, Cruise has pushed back its commercialization plans in recent years as it refines its autonomous-driving capabilities. In October, Cruise said it plans to roll out thousands of robot taxis across U.S. cities in coming years. The company has said Cruise could reap $50 billion in revenue by the end of the decade.
SoftBank had a 19.6% stake in Cruise after investing $2.25 billion in July 2018. Cruise was then a newly formed entity primarily made up of Cruise Automation, the driverless developer that GM acquired in early 2016.
RECORD SALES PRICES DRIVE GM PROFIT UP 56% TO $10B LAST YEAR
“Cruise will continue to operate as it does today — an independent company working alongside GM in a flexible, collaborative partnership,” Cruise Chief Executive Kyle Vogt said in a statement. Mr. Vogt, Cruise’s founder, was named CEO last month.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GM | GENERAL MOTORS CO. | 44.83 | +1.17 | +2.68% |
Also Friday, Cruise said it has established a program that gives employees the opportunity quarterly to sell vested shares in the company, a move aimed at keeping and attracting talent.
In a blog post, Mr. Vogt said the so-called recurring liquidity opportunity program would “provide IPO-like liquidity and potential upside for employees but without all the distractions of being a public company.”
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Mutual-fund company T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and Honda Motor Co. have also taken stakes in Cruise.
Write to Denny Jacob at denny.jacob@wsj.com and Mike Colias at Mike.Colias@wsj.com
Elon Musk says Tesla FSD beta can lull users into thinking their cars are driverless
Electric vehicle maker Tesla is poised to expand its controversial FSD Beta program with a long-awaited download button that would allow customers to get new, unfinished versions of the company’s driver assistance software to test on public roads even though that software hasn’t been debugged yet.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who called a previous version of FSD Beta software “not great,” cautioned Friday evening that FSD Beta now seems so good it can give drivers a false sense of security that they don’t need to pay attention to driving while FSD Beta is engaged, even though they do have to remain attentive and at the wheel.
Tesla and CEO Musk didn’t immediately respond to CNBC for comment.
Tesla markets its driver assistance systems in a standard package called Autopilot, and a premium package called FSD, short for Full Self-Driving in the U.S. Neither of these systems make Tesla’s cars autonomous, according to the company’s users’ manuals and website.
Musk has been promising his fans an FSD Beta button for at least six months. On March 9, 2021, he wrote: “Build 8.3 of FSD should be done QA testing by end of next week, so that’s roughly when download button should show up.”
The CEO also revealed Thursday that Tesla will require owners who use the forthcoming Beta button to prove they are good drivers first, before getting access to their FSD Beta download.
Musk wrote: “Beta button will request permission to assess driving behavior using Tesla insurance calculator. If driving behavior is good for 7 days, beta access will be granted.” (The company began selling insurance in its home state of California in August 2019.)
Tesla board member, Hiromichi Mizuno, shared Musk’s announcement and touted the company’s approach, writing on Friday: “You must be a good driver not to drive, which may become a new norm.”
Musk replied to Mizuno Friday night:
“Ironically, yes at this time. FSD beta system at times can seem so good that vigilance isn’t necessary, but it is. Also, any beta user who isn’t super careful will get booted.2000 beta users operating for almost a year with no accidents. Needs to stay that way.”
Musk’s tweet contradicts facts about the FSD Beta program conveyed in the California Department of Motor Vehicles Autonomous Vehicles Branch memo written in March 2021.
The DMV’s Autonomous Vehicles Branch Chief Miguel Acosta, who wrote the memo, spoke with Tesla employees on that date, including associate general counsel Eric Williams and Autopilot software director CJ Moore.
Acosta wrote that they informed him the FSD Beta program as of March 9, 2021, included 753 Tesla employees and 71 non-employees — less than half of the 2,000 FSD Beta users Musk alluded to in his tweet on Friday.
CNBC directly obtained the memo and other correspondence between Tesla and the California DMV, which were published earlier by Plainsite, a legal transparency website.
In their correspondence, Tesla characterized even their newest FSD Beta features as a Level 2 driver assistance system, rather than fully driverless technology.