The most striking moment of Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting Thursday wasn’t when Elon Musk won a impossible-sounding pay package worth nearly $1 trillion. That was a foregone conclusion, given Musk’s popularity with retail shareholders and his ability to vote his own extensive holdings. To me, the more illuminating moment was when the gathered crowd of […]
Last month, General Motors added its name to the growing list of automakers who are pursuing a novel type of partially automated technology called “eyes-off driving.” What they didn’t do, though, is provide a thorough description of how they’ll take responsibility when something goes wrong. Not to be confused with the type of “eyes-off” distracted […]
Waymo said it plans on launching commercial robotaxi services in three new cities: San Diego, Las Vegas, and Detroit. The announcement comes after the company said it would begin rapidly scaling to bring its fully driverless technology to more people on a faster timeline. Waymo didn’t say exactly when it plans on opening up its […]
Tesla’s Cybercab isn’t scheduled to go into production until 2026, but when it does, it may end up stuck with a vestige of the automotive past: a steering wheel. To be sure, we still use steering wheels. But the Tesla Cybercab was meant to be the first vehicle of the new future, and there’s nothing […]
Robotaxi fever is back, baby! After a bunch of automaker-led autonomous driving projects shut down amid concerns over safety and costs, car companies are expressing a renewed interest in self-driving cars, and robotaxis specifically. Stellantis, which oversees brands like Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler, announced today a “new collaboration” with a diverse range of firms, […]
Lucid says it will eventually sell “privately owned” autonomous vehicles with the help of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence technology. The company is the latest to declare its intention to sell Level 4 autonomous vehicles to its customers, despite a range of theoretical and logistical challenges standing in the way. Lucid’s autonomous vehicles — which do not exist […]
During a recent all-hands meeting, Waymo’s chief winter weather expert laid it out for all the company’s engineers and product managers: if Waymo wants to expand to new cities and new markets, it’s robotaxis will need to be able to confidently and safely handle the snow. In its first few years of operation, Waymo has […]
Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted the company would be able to remove the safety monitors from its robotaxis “by the end of the year.” He also said Tesla would launch a robotaxi service in 8-10 new markets also before the end of 2025. “We are expecting to have no safety drivers in at least large […]
We’ve got a special episode of Decoder today. I’m talking to General Motors CEO Mary Barra and new GM Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson about a lot of big news the company just announced. That includes a Google Gemini-powered AI assistant that’s coming to new cars, and an entirely new hardware and software platform coming […]
General Motors may be shrinking its electric vehicle production, but the automaker wants investors to know its still committed to future technologies like automated driving, software-defined vehicles, and AI voice assistants. Today, GM CEO Mary Barra announced a string of new features coming to the company’s brands, like Cadillac and Chevy, that she said will […]