Optimism about robotaxis has returned to the automotive industry, albeit in a modified form after recent exposure to the harsh realities of creating a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles (AVs).
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on 6 August that the ride-hailing giant was in “late-stage” discussions with unnamed global AV developers to join the Uber platform, meaning that app users could find a driverless car in front of them sooner rather than later. “Right now, the economics and the math are definitely working,” he said on Uber's second-quarter earnings call.
Meanwhile, Google parent company Alphabet said late last month that it was committing a further $5 billion into its Waymo robotaxi unit in its bid to create the “world's leading autonomous driving technology company”.
Waymo now claims to deliver more than 50,000 paid driverless rides a week, mainly in San Francisco, California and Phoenix, Arizona.
In Europe, Croatian EV specialist Rimac announced the creation of robotaxi company Verne and unveiled a two-seat self-driving vehicle running Mobileye’s Drive platform.
Verne's service will operate first in Zagreb, Croatia, with plans to come to the UK and Germany after it signed agreements with 11 cities in Europe and the Middle East. No timings were given, though.
British AV firm Wayve in May secured $1 billion of funding from tech investor Softbank, tech firm Nvidia and others to continue developing its system, which is powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
In China, robotaxi development is moving fast, with 19 cities running tests of robotaxis or robobuses, Reuters reported in August.
Companies spearheading the push including Apollo Go, AutoX, Pony.ai and WeRide. Apollo Go, a division of tech giant Baidu, operates a fleet of 500 robotaxis in Wuhan, charging fares from the equivalent of just 44p.
The difficulty in building a safe fleet of robotaxis was illustrated by the controversy following a crash in San Francisco last October, involving a pedestrian and a vehicle operated by Cruise, the AV division of General Motors.
After Cruise admitted that it had failed to provide full details of exactly what happened, the state of California revoked its permit to operate.
The fallout included Cruise cutting around 900 jobs a month after founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigned in November.
Cruise has been a big financial drag on GM, and the American giant could have easily chosen to shut the unit. Indeed, Ford and Volkswagen closed their jointly owned Argo AI AV division in 2022.
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