Cruise enhances its robotaxis for safer emergency vehicle interactions

Smart mobility firm Cruise is aiming to improve safety by enhancing how its robotaxis handles interactions with emergency vehicles.

Cruise has amassed a wealth of data of over five million miles of driverless journeys that it uses to demonstrate the capacity of autonomous vehicles to enhance road safety when compared to conventional human driving. However, there are documented cases of autonomous vehicles getting in the way of emergency responders to various...

13 October 2023 | Applications

Waymo’s vehicles are confused by San Francisco’s fog

The latest challenge that autonomous vehicles are struggling with is driving in fog.

Five of Waymo's fully driverless vehicles had to pull over by the side of a residential street in San Francisco on Tuesday when they encountered the city’s notoriously dense fog.

The incident caused significant traffic issues, as motorists were unable to pass the parked vehicles.

In a blog post a couple of years ago, Waymo highlighted the difficulties that fog...

13 April 2023 | AI

Wayve partners with Microsoft to scale AI for autonomous vehicles

London-based Wayve has partnered with Microsoft to access the supercomputing infrastructure it requires to scale its AI models for autonomous vehicles.

Wayve and Microsoft already have a close relationship. Microsoft participated in Wayve’s $200 million Series B investment round and Wayze began using Azure in 2020 after its computing requirements grew beyond its in-house 12-HDD RAID array and the SSD-based cache server that superseded it.

Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve,...

19 May 2022 | AI

Waymo and Cruise can now offer autonomous vehicle rides to the public

Autonomous Vehicle

Waymo and Cruise have both received approval to offer autonomous vehicle rides to the public by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

Whilst a major step in the push towards autonomous vehicles, both companies will only be allowed to operate in certain parts of the state and under specific conditions.

All that remains is to secure a deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and both companies will be able to offer paid...

1 October 2021 | Connected Vehicles

Toyota subsidiary to acquire Lyft’s autonomous vehicle division

Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet has announced that it’s acquiring Lyft’s autonomous vehicle division for $550 million.

The division, known as Level 5, has established itself among the leaders in the development of autonomous driving technologies.

Logan Green, Co-Founder and CEO of Lyft, said:

“Today’s announcement launches Lyft into the next phase of an incredible journey to bring our mission to life. Lyft has spent nine years building a transportation...

27 April 2021 | Connected Vehicles

Nuro receives first permit to operate self-driving cars commercially in California

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has awarded Nuro the state’s first commercial permit for self-driving cars.

The permit allows Nuro to operate its autonomous vehicles commercially on the roads of two counties near the company’s Bay Area headquarters.

Nuro says it will soon announce its first commercial deployment with an “established” partner. The company’s fleet of Prius cars will kick-off the deployment but will later be joined by Nuro’s...

24 December 2020 | Connected Vehicles

Ex-Google engineer sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing autonomous car secrets

Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing autonomous car secrets.

Levandowski was employed by Google’s self-driving car division Waymo when he transferred over 14,000 secret files to his laptop before leaving the company.

The stolen files were taken to Uber, where Levandowski led the firm’s own robotaxi project. US District Judge William Alsup called Levandowski’s actions the "biggest trade secret crime I have...

5 August 2020 | Connected Vehicles