autonomous driving

Xiaomi returned to the Nürburgring to set another lap record, but this time it did it with nobody in the car at all, setting down the first official autonomous time at the world-famous racetrack.

As promised, we are here in Palo Alto, California, live at Rivian’s inaugural AI and Autonomy day, which the American automaker has been teasing for a month now. The event was filled with numerous exciting updates, including new in-house technology, a new AI assistant, the addition of LiDAR, and a uniquely wrapped Rivian R2.

Lucid Gravity Robotaxis? Yes, please! Uber Technologies, Lucid Group, and Nuro, Inc. announced an exciting new partnership this morning. The three will combine technologies to deliver the public a premium global robotaxi option on Uber’s platform. We should see the Lucid robotaxis roll out in their first major city next year.

American EV automaker Rivian is expanding across the pond into the UK, hoping to tap into the region’s talent pool in artificial intelligence engineering.

Volkswagen’s mobility company MOIA just hit a big milestone: It’s rolled out the ID. Buzz AD, VW’s first fully autonomous production vehicle, and it’s been built from the ground up for mobility services.

Waymo is once again expanding its driverless taxi service areas in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, adding over 80 square miles total between the three areas.

The move comes less than a week before the tentative, much-anticipated launch of Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, another market that Waymo operates in.

VW’s US self-driving arm, Volkswagen ADMT (Autonomous Driving Mobility & Transport), is partnering with Uber to roll out thousands of autonomous ID. Buzz vans across the US over the next decade.

Zoox is saying, “LiDAR, camera, action!” The autonomous robotaxi developer announced an expansion into Los Angeles, marking Zoox’s sixth testing location. The initial rollout around Hollywood will be small to begin as Zoox remains “thoughtful and measured” in its rollout approach.

EV automaker ZEEKR held a live event in China today, unveiling several new forms of autonomous driving technology. The company launched a new smart driving solution called G-Pilot, which will enable Level 3 autonomous driving in one of its upcoming EV models before expanding to others.

Starting today, the fully autonomous Waymo One ride service is available exclusively to customers in Austin, Texas through the Uber app. Today’s news builds upon Waymo’s existing partnership with Uber and is a milestone in the robotaxi startup’s expansion to new cities around the US.

There are still many questions surrounding the plausibility of full-fledged autonomous robotaxi operations around the world, but Waymo, one of the current leaders in the segment, is putting at least one stigma to rest. A new study conducted with the help of reinsurance provider Swiss Re used hundreds of thousands of liability claims to demonstrate that robotaxi vehicles using the Waymo Driver platform deliver significantly higher safety performance than vehicles operated by a human driver.

Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo is going overseas for the first time and testing its tech in Japan. In early 2025, the company will begin testing its Jaguar I-PACE vehicles in Tokyo, with plans to stay in the region for the foreseeable future.

After getting a hefty $5.6 billion in fresh capital last week, Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo is now reported to be valued at more than $45 billion.

Wayve, a well-funded London-based autonomous vehicle startup backed by Uber and Softbank, will begin testing its “Tesla-like” self-learning automated driving software in San Francisco and the Bay Area. The move marks its first on-road trials outside of the UK.

Last night, Pony.ai, one of China’s most prominent names in autonomous driving and robotaxi rides, filed an IPO prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If approved, the robotaxi company intends to trade on the Nasdaq.

Chinese EV automaker ZEEKR has shared its Q2 2024 financial results, and its numbers are encouraging for a marque that is expanding globally and doing so quickly. In addition to financial numbers, ZEEKR’s CEO shared a few interesting company updates, including a new model and some autonomous driving tech.

Mercedes-Benz has been certified to begin testing its Level 4 autonomous driving technology in Shanghai, China. It is the first international automaker to garner approval from local regulators as the German automaker looks to set its lineup apart from stiff competition overseas.

For a couple of years, two of the leading driving systems pushing the limits of automotive autonomy have been Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) and XPeng Motors’ Navigation Guided Pilot (XNGP). Both EV automakers are leading the race in their respective markets, but neither technology is available in the opposite country (at least for now). In a cool video recently posted by XPeng, founder, chairman, and CEO He Xiaopeng tested out Tesla FSD for himself in the US and documented his experience, which you can see in the video below.

In a recent interview, Ford CEO Jim Farley discussed the American automaker’s progress in autonomous driving, stating that it has achieved Level 3, which allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. However, it’ll still be a while before Ford customers get to test it out.

Daimler Truck North America has just debuted a demonstrator electric semi-truck with autonomous driving technology.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating two fatal crashes involving two separate Ford Mustang Mach-Es crashing into stationary vehicles, where three people have died. In at least one of the crashes, Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driver-assist system was activated at the time of the crash, while the second one is under preliminary investigation. Here’s what happened.