Autonomous vehicle technology and electrification startups were once the darlings of the VC and corporate world. The two technologies promised billions of dollars in revenue — and a new pathway for automakers to make money beyond building and selling cars.  Those VC-money-printing days have been over for AVs for a while now, with a few […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tesla is evaluating multiple Texas cities where it wants to test a long-promised robotaxi service, including Austin, according to emails obtained by Bloomberg News. An employee has apparently been in touch with Austin officials since May, and recently held an event in December to “train first responders on how to best work with Tesla’s autonomous […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. The founders of Atlanta-based Slip Robotics say they’ve developed […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Waymo will begin testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Tokyo in early 2025, the first time the Alphabet company’s robotaxis have driven on public roads outside the U.S. The move to Japan is part of Waymo’s “road trips,” a development program that involves bringing its technology to a variety of cities and testing it — […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Trump transition team wants to end a federal rule requiring automakers to report crashes when advanced driver-assistance or autonomous driving technology is engaged, Reuters reports. Federal safety agencies would lose the ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems should the rule — which went into effect in 2021 — […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson told the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 that he didn’t think Tesla would launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in California (or anywhere else) next year, despite what Elon Musk had claimed. The “fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” he said at the time. But it seems that […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

GM’s decision to shut down its Cruise robotaxi program continues to ripple through the market, extending to the self-driving car company’s minority investors. Microsoft, which in 2021 made an investment into Cruise, will take $800 million impairment charge as a result of GM’s actions, according to a regulatory filing. Microsoft said the charge will be […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Honda Motor Co. will stop funding a joint venture with General Motors and Cruise to launch a robotaxi service in Japan, now that GM has pulled the plug on Cruise and its commercial robotaxi ambitions, reports The Nikkei. GM said Tuesday it would cease funding Cruise and instead absorb the company and combine it with […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After spending more than $10 billion to try to develop an autonomous robotaxi, General Motors is now calling time on the endeavor. On Tuesday afternoon, the automaker announced that it is done investing in Cruise's robotaxi development and will instead combine the startup's technical team with its internal efforts at GM.

After several years, GM has accepted the inevitable: Given the costs, there's no way to build a profitable robotaxi business. This year, GM will have spent around $2 billion on Cruise.

"GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital efficient manner," said Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM. "Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy, and the deeper integration of our teams, paired with GM’s strong brands, scale, and manufacturing strength, will help advance our vision for the future of transportation."

Read full article

Comments

The news came by Slack message.  Cruise CEO Marc Whitten, who took the top post in June, posted a message Tuesday afternoon in the company’s announcements channel along with a link to a press release entitled “GM to refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles.” GM, which acquired the self-driving car startup in 2016, would […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

General Motors said Tuesday it will no longer fund the development of a commercial robotaxi business and will instead absorb its self-driving car subsidiary Cruise and combine it with the automaker’s own efforts to develop driver assistance features — and eventually fully autonomous personal vehicles. The pivot is a remarkable step for the automaker, which […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

San Francisco is the most prepared city for new transportation technologies like AI, autonomous vehicles, and air taxis, according to an new urban mobility readiness index released Tuesday. The index, created by the Oliver Wyman Forum and the University of California, Berkeley, evaluated 70 global cities on a range of factors such as walkability, air […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ride-hail giant Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide have launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. The launch marks Uber’s first international autonomous vehicle offering.  Uber has been snatching up partnerships with autonomous vehicle companies across sectors, including ride-hail, delivery, and trucking. Other partners include Wayve, Serve Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Waymo is partnering with Moove, an African mobility fintech that offers vehicle financing to gig workers, to handle fleet management operations for its robotaxi service in Phoenix and, soon, Miami.  The partnership marks several firsts. It will signal Waymo’s entry into Miami. And it’s also the first time Moove will enter the U.S. market and […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Chinese autonomous driving tech company will go public on the U.S. markets at $13 per share.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Teleo describes itself as a construction robotics startup, but its mission is bigger than automating heavy equipment like excavators and tractors. Today, Teleo’s retrofitted machinery allows its customers to operate their existing fleets semi-autonomously. In the future, the startup sees the data it collects as a key enabler for the robotics industry to reach its […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

May Mobility is slowly advancing its driverless capabilities. The startup this week launched a small-scale deployment of autonomous shuttles, which will drive themselves along a fixed route without a human safety driver present. May will initially deploy one to two autonomous Toyota Sienna minivans to ferry employees and “invited guests” across a 2-square-mile area of […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pony AI, the Chinese autonomous vehicle startup that’s looking to go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange, now wants to raise around $260 million, according to a new regulatory filing. That’s up from its previous target of around $224 million. To meet the goal, Pony will sell as many as 20 million American depository shares. […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Nuro is rolling out a test fleet of its driverless, passenger-less R3 vehicles across the Bay Area and Houston, two months after the autonomous vehicle technology startup changed its business strategy to license its AV tech to automakers and mobility providers. The large-scale demo, which will expand the domain where Nuro currently tests, is designed to show […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.