Is SPAC making a comeback? After months of silence, merger deals are slowly starting to return. One of the latest: Plus Automation is heading to the public markets through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp IX, a blank-check firm led [β¦]
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Alistair Barr/Business Insider
When I picked up my new Tesla Model 3 Performance in December, it came with a free trial of the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.
I originally made the purchase to enjoy driving a fast sports car. But I've also been fascinated by the promise of autonomous vehicles ever since I experienced Google's early driverless technology as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal over a decade ago.
So, for the past five months, I've been using FSD (in "Chill" mode only) to see what it can and can't do.
I still drive the car. Legally, functionally, and by necessity. Tesla calls this software Full Self-Driving, but it's really an advanced driver-assistance system. Every moment it's engaged, I am still the driver, and Tesla makes that very clear when you're in the car in FSD mode.
The company is planning to launch a robotaxi service in Austin in June. That will come with fully autonomous software that requires no supervision. However, the reason for this diary is to give you a sense of what Tesla's latest and greatest published driving software is capable of right now.
Here are my observations, feelings, and takeaways from driving more than 1,000 miles in FSD around Silicon Valley and beyond. I also shared this diary with Bryant Walker Smith, a lawyer who focuses on mobility, driver-assistance, and autonomous-vehicle technology. I've included some of his context and thoughts throughout. I also shared my diary with Tesla's press office and CEO Elon Musk via email on
Wednesday. They didn't respond.
Let's get this out of the way first: This is one of the best cars I've ever driven. On and off for over 20 years, I have test-driven cars from Hummers to Porsches to Alfa Romeos. The Model 3 Performance has incredible steering, high build quality, and incredible speed, for a lot less money than a BMW M4. It's a great deal and I love it.
In early January, switching on FSD was a surprise at first. It handled way more situations than I expected β basically everything on most trips.
Driving in traffic, with a destination punched into Tesla's onboard screen, is less stressful than handling stop-and-go congestion yourself and trying to decide which turn to take next. It's a new, slightly more relaxing experience. I get to my destination in a better mood.
Tesla FSD always comes to a full stop at stop signs. Obviously, I do too. But maybe I don't? This was annoying at first, but now I don't notice, and it's safer. I thought I would lose time, but really, there's no difference. What started as an irritation became a reminder of how easily humans normalize cutting corners when driving themselves.
The FSD is a more efficient driver. It uses less battery power than I do driving the car. I know this because I look at the onboard map, which predicts the battery level upon arrival. Once I switch to FSD, that prediction drops and stays lower once I arrive.
Pothole avoidance, please! My Tesla in FSD drives straight over most potholes on the road. I try to (carefully!) avoid them while driving myself. Is this why some Tesla owners say they have to replace their tires so often?
I disengaged FSD in San Francisco a few months ago. There was a car parked on the side of a thin side road. I knew I could squeeze around it, but Tesla FSD just sat there. So I took over, drove around, and then restarted FSD.
I disengaged another time on Highway 80, going from Silicon Valley to Lake Tahoe with my wife. We were in FSD (Chill mode) in the slow lane. Traffic built up ahead, and the faster lanes started backing up. Another car darted into our lane, right in front of us. We screamed, and I grabbed the wheel. Maybe FSD would have handled it, but I wasn't willing to find out.
Speaking of lanes: In Chill mode, FSD stays in the slow lane, and it's slow to move across when a highway intersection is approaching. This gets me stuck behind cars merging onto the highway.
When I drive myself, I get over into the outside lanes before this stuff happens. I know a few blocks in advance that something is going to get snarled, so I adjust early. Tesla FSD doesn't do that in Chill mode. So, we have to slow down and get into complex merge situations. I suspect being in other FSD modes, such as "Hurry" mode, would mean my Tesla drives in the faster, outer lanes of the highway.
I was impressed during the first two to three months of using FSD. When my free trial ended in June, I thought I would probably start paying $99 a month for this technology. And I don't even drive that much. I bought this car to drive a fast sports car. Now, I barely drive it.
That paragraph above was the thrust of the story I planned to write earlier this year.
Then, my colleague Lloyd Lee and I tested Tesla FSD against Waymo in San Francisco on May 1. You can read all about that here. TLDR: We ran a red light while in my Tesla's FSD mode. Waymo refused to go that specific route, suggesting that Waymo's software system can't handle that specific intersection either. However, I was shocked by the experience.
Walker Smith says there's "a huge difference between running a red light at an intersection and proactively avoiding the intersection."
About two weeks after that aforementioned test, I was driving in FSD mode with a friend on Highway 280 north toward San Francisco on a sunny and clear day. Traffic built up ahead, so my Tesla pulled off on an exit lane. The onboard map showed that the car planned to wait by a traffic light and then go straight ahead β basically getting back on the highway to try to overtake a few other cars stuck in traffic. Similar to what the Waze app sometimes has drivers do.
Once the light turned green, my Tesla turned left under the highway instead, even though the Tesla map showed that we should have gone straight. Then it did a U-turn at a slightly uncomfortable speed (a little too fast, I felt). The worst part was that it did this U-turn from the outside lane on a multi-lane road rather than the designated left-turn lane. And it did this maneuver in front of several traffic police who were attending to a minor incident about 70 feet away.
Luckily, there were no cars in the left lane, which was the correct lane from which to do a U-turn or to just turn left. If there had been a car trying to turn left at that moment, we might have crashed into it. I'm not 100% sure of this, but that's my feeling. There was a risk of this happening.
After doing the U-turn, the FSD system was going to try to turn left again, taking us, finally, back on Highway 280 north. But again, it was trying to turn from the center lane, not the left turn lane. I disengaged at this point and took over the driving.
My friend turned to me in shock. I blushed, which was a strange experience. It was as if I were embarrassed by my car.
"Your U-turn examples are new to me," Walker Smith said. "They are wild!"
"It's possible that, if another vehicle had been in the left-most lane, then your Tesla would not have attempted a turn," he added. "But it's also possible that it would have."
More recently, about 2 weeks ago, I was in FSD "Chill" mode in San Francisco, driving toward Ocean Beach. The car was on a two-lane road, and the Tesla map showed that it was supposed to pull into a left turn lane in the center of this road. The idea being that we would wait for oncoming traffic to clear and then turn left across the two lanes going the other way. The car put the left indicator on, but didn't go into the left turn lane. I disengaged and pulled gently into the correct lane myself.
I still switch FSD on a lot, in "Chill" mode. On Tuesday, for instance, I drove on Highway 101 north to work from one of our WeWork office locations. This trip, and the return journey home, were uneventful and less stressful than driving myself in highway traffic.
My FSD free trial ends in June. I'm now less likely to pay $99 a month for this technology. However, when I'm expecting to drive a lot during a particular period, I might pay for it occasionally.
The final words should go to Walker Smith. Having read my diary, he made a crucial point.
"Your (and every) version of so-called 'FSD' is merely a driver-assistance system," he told me. "Accordingly, it only works unless and until it doesn't. That's why you have to supervise β indeed, why you are still the driver who is driving."
This may seem like quibbling over slight language tweaks. But there's a giant gap between "driver-assistance" systems that still need human supervision and fully autonomous technology that does not have anyone behind the wheel.
Walker Smith slapped me on the wrist for writing in my original diary that "I barely drive it." He described this as "a fundamental misunderstanding and misrepresentation of driver-assistance systems." (He also thinks BI should correct the wording of our San Francisco Waymo vs Tesla test story. I checked with my editor, who said no.)
Walker Smith described the difference between driver-assistance and automated driving as "climbing a 500-foot cliff with a rope or free-soloing it." Or, the difference between hearing a pilot on a plane say "Hi folks, today we'll be using autopilot" and hearing the pilot say "Hi folks, today you'll be using autopilot because I'm getting off the plane."
FSD is an incredible piece of software, until it's not. When it works, it feels like the future. When it doesn't, it reminds you we're not there yet.
Wayve
One of Europe's buzziest AI startups is teaming up with Nissan as the Japanese automaker looks to overhaul its assisted driving tech.
Nissan said on Wednesday it would incorporate autonomous driving software from London-based startup Wayve into its ProPILOT driver-assist system in 2027.
The partnership makes Nissan the first automaker to use Wayve's self-driving tech.
The London-based startup is among the hottest names in the world of self-driving cars, raising over $1 billion last year from investors including SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
Like Tesla, Wayve's fleet of self-driving Ford Mach-Es uses cameras and end-to-end AI models that learn how to drive from real-world testing and simulations.
CEO Alex Kendall previously told Business Insider this allows Wayve's vehicles to "generalize" and adjust to new driving scenarios in the same way a human would, rather than relying on radar systems like lidar and high-precision mapping like rivals such as Waymo.
Wayve has expanded rapidly over the past year and is now testing its vehicles in the US and Germany in addition to its home base in the UK.
Nissan said the next generation of ProPILOT will incorporate Wayve's AI Driver alongside next-generation lidar to provide advanced collision avoidance capabilities. It will also utilize the technology's ability to learn rapidly from vast amounts of data.
The current version of ProPILOT is designed for highway use and provides cruise control and assistance with steering and braking.
That makes it more limited than rival systems offered by Tesla and automakers in China, where advanced autonomous driving tech is rapidly becoming standard.
The partnership is a major milestone for Wayve, which also struck a deal last year with Uber to collaborate on self-driving tech.
As companies like Waymo or Tesla hype up full driverless technology β also known as Level 4 driving β Wayve is more interested in working in what it views as an untapped market for advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS, for automakers. This includes Level 2 and Level 3 driving, which allows for a car to drive itself in certain conditions but still requires the presence of a driver.
"Our competitors are those who are also making really performant ADAS, L2, L3 solutions," Kaity Fischer, Wayve's VP of commercial and operations, told Business Insider at the recent Ride AI conference in Los Angeles, noting that Wayve's clients are largely original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
"L4 is still our North Star, and down the road, that will be the technology that we deploy."
Fischer said one advantage of Wayve's driver technology is that it's "hardware agnostic," meaning the software can work with OEM cars that may be outfitted with different levels of hardware support for self-driving, such as lidar or cameras.
One of the ongoing debates in the automotive world is whether a cameras-only approach to full self-driving β most notably led by Tesla β is a safe, cheaper, and, as a result, superior route to achieve fully autonomous driving at scale.
"To change the hardware on a vehicle platform is anywhere from a four to six-year lead time and it's very expensive," Fischer said. "We're able to work with OEMs and say, 'Alright, what hardware do you have already submitted for your upcoming production models? And then we can work together on the level of autonomy that makes sense for their vehicle."
Last year, Hugging Face, the AI dev platform, launched LeRobot, a collection of open AI models, datasets, and tools to help build real-world robotics systems. On Tuesday, Hugging Face teamed up with AI startup Yaak to expand LeRobot with a training set for robots and cars that can navigate environments, like city streets, autonomously. The [β¦]
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Courtesy of Waabi
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Raquel Urtasun, the founder and CEO of Waabi, an autonomous driving startup headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I've been working in AI for 25 years after first being exposed to AI research in my undergrad.
I started my career in academia, focusing on technology capable of human reasoning. Around 15 years ago, I became interested in self-driving technology.
I joined Uber in 2017 and became the chief scientist of its self-driving unit. I wanted to push self-driving technology in the real world. However, I felt like the industry was using a capital-intensive approach that I didn't think could scale self-driving vehicles. I saw an opportunity to build my own company with an AI-first approach.
In 2021, I founded Waabi. We're an AI company focused on developing self-driving trucks. We've raised over $280 million, receiving investment from best-in-class investors like Nvidia and Uber.
Waabi raised large amounts during our two rounds of funding so far, but I'm not building the company for an exit. I want to transform the world. Having the best people in the industry supporting us has been a huge help in the endeavor.
I spent nearly four years at Uber. It was a great stepping stone for entrepreneurship. I learned so much about building a business and being an executive. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO, became a mentor to me, which has been an asset in my career.
Had I started Waabi as an academic, I don't think I would be as successful today.
I started Waabi because I didn't think the industry's capital-intensive approach, which has historically involved fleets of vehicles driving physical distances for tests, would generate scalable technology that could be deployed in the real world.
Instead of a system with bits and pieces of AI playing a small role, I wanted to build a single AI system that can safely perform all the necessary tests for self-driving.
This meant building an Al-generated simulation system for testing and training vehicles that was the same as the real world. My background in AI helped me foresee this technology years ahead.
Waabi is headquartered in Toronto, where there's a lot of AI talent. We have trucks in Texas that are driving autonomously on public roads for commercial operations, both through a partnership with Uber Freight and also direct-to-customer.
We've done two rounds of financing. Our Series A was led by Khosla Ventures. It was too large to be a "seed" round, but it was done in the company's first week. We raised $83.5 million.
Our Series A investors are all excited about Waabi. Vinod Khosla, who founded Khosla Ventures, is himself very bullish about our potential. This support is so valuable because as a company continues its journey, your current investors and your reputation help to tell your story.
In our brief three-and-a-half-year history, we've hit ambitious milestone goals. When I pitched during our Series A, I mentioned our plans for the simulator and trucks, and we managed to hit our milestones exactly as I pitched. This resonated well with investors for our second round.
There have been some challenges. There was an accident with an autonomous vehicle in 2023. The market was quite tough after that, and investors were concerned about how one incident could significantly reduce the value of the investment.
There were also concerns about whether the population wanted self-driving in the first place. Investors will always ask you about risks, so we explained them. Our safety approach, which is simulation-first and avoids adding risk to the roads before the technology is ready, resonated with investors.
We announced our second round of financing last June and raised $200 million. It was a very oversubscribed round, and we had to say no to people. We ended up raising more than we intended to.
We were very strategic about the types of investors we wanted to bring to our cap table so that we'd have the best in class to help us in the company's next stage.
On one side, there was the AI bucket. We had investment from Khosla Ventures β who really understood generative AI before anybody else and have also invested in OpenAI β as well as Nvidia.
With logistics, we wanted a forward-looking shipper, which was Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, who operate IKEA. We also had participation from Uber, who jointly led the round.
Additionally, we wanted original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), which is very important when you build technology for self-driving. We had Volvo Group Venture Capital, Scania Invest, as well as Porsche Automobil Holding SE, invest in us.
Our differentiated technology is one reason behind our success. Investors were coming around to Gen AI for the physical world and saw Waabi as at the forefront of that.
Nvidia is one of our investors, but we also partner with them to build the generative AI compute that drives our trucks.
My personal relationship with Nvidia goes back a decade. Jensen Huang has always been a big supporter of my research. When I was an academic, he'd come to academic events. He's very personable and someone I look up to in terms of building a business.
We have a tremendous roster of supporters behind us, including Jensen and the team, Geoffrey Hinton, and Dara Khosrowshahi. It's very important to have a diverse set of voices you can bounce ideas off of. For me, building a company is not really about the money you raise, it's about who's on your cap table and helping you build the best possible company.
I'm not building Waabi for an exit but to transform the world.
The Waymo self-driving company says it has fixed a problem that caused a car to repeatedly circle a parking lot for about five minutes while its rider was trying to get to an airport.
Last month, Mike Johns posted a video on LinkedIn showing what happened after he was picked up by a Waymo self-driving car in Scottsdale, Arizona. Johns' post said the car made eight circles. After a Waymo support agent helped get the car moving in the right direction, he was driven to the airport in time to make his flight.
"Why is this happening to me on a Monday? I'm in a Waymo car and this car is just going in circles... I got a flight to catch, why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy," he said in the video.
Β© Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
General Motors is giving up on Cruise's robotaxi focus after eight years of pouring money into the commercial business.
GM said on Tuesday that it will no longer fund Cruise's robotaxi development work because of increasing competition and the resources needed to scale the business. Instead, GM will combine Cruise with its own technical team to advance autonomous and assisted driving.
GM agreed with other Cruise investors that will raise its ownership from 90% to more than 97%, the company said on Tuesday. The restructuring is expected to lower GM's annual spending by more than $1 billion after the plan is completed in the first half of next year.
"GM made this decision to refocus our strategy because we believe in the importance of driver assistance and autonomous driving technology in our vehicles," GM's CEO Mary Barra said on a call with media and analysts on Tuesday.
The US automaker acquired the self-driving startup in 2016 for $1 billion. It has poured billions in investments, including from industry heavyweights like SoftBank and Microsoft, into the company to develop a robotaxi business β a service where a driverless car picks and drops passengers, through an Uber-like app.
The GM subsidiary got in hot water with regulators last year after several safety accidents.
In August 2023, an empty Cruise AV drove into wet concrete at a construction site and got stuck. Before that, a Cruise robotaxi blocked emergency vehicles on their way to respond to a mass shooting. The company also admitted to submitting a false report to the government during an investigation of a crash and paid $500,000 in a criminal fine.
The company lost its permit to operate in California after a pedestrian was dragged for 20 feet beneath one of its driverless vehicles last October. After that incident, the company paused testing in other states and laid off 900 employees β about 24% of it workforce.
Cruise cofounder and former CEO Kyle Vogt, who resigned a month after the incident, criticized GM's decision on Tuesday.
"In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies," Vogt wrote on X.
Vogt stepped down after GM and the board of Cruise increased scrutiny of his leadership, including appointing GM's general counsel as Cruise's chief administrative officer and hiring a third-party expert to assess safety.
Cruise's biggest competitors are Amazon-backed Zoox, Alphabet's Waymo, and Tesla, which introduced its own robotaxi β the Cybercab β in a highly-anticipated event in October.
At the time, Vogt weighed in to lay out the challenges that Tesla would face.
"It takes a non-trivial amount of work to go from making a car mostly drive without interventions to safe, robust, and legally compliant robotaxi network that meshes well with local communities," he wrote in a post on X before Tesla's launch event.
Waymo is much further ahead of its competitors in bringing robotaxis to the masses. It has opened its service to the public in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, providing over 100,000 paid rides a week as of October, the company said.
After pouring more than $10 billion into its robotaxi venture, General Motors (GM) has decided to cut its losses and abandon its driverless ride-hailing service, Cruise.Β According to a recent Bloomberg report, GM will cease funding its Cruise divisionβs robotaxi development [β¦]
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In October, Pony AI revealed plans to go public, marking a significant milestone after eight years of development. Just two weeks ago, the Toyota-backed self-driving startup filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO), aiming for a valuation above $4 [β¦]
The post Toyota-backed self-driving startup Pony AI raises $260M in U.S. IPO, valued at $4.55 billion first appeared on Tech Startups.
