News: Why You're Probably Always Going to See Those Ugly Dome-Shaped LiDARs on Driverless Fleet Cars
The large, dome-shaped LiDARs that have become a fixture on driverless car prototypes are expensive and notably ugly. And yet, these unsightly devices should remain planted on driverless cars, even when they become available in commercial fleet services across the country in a couple of years.
Today's Top News: Ford CEO Rethinks Strategy to Lead Driverless Revolution
Newly appointed Ford Motor CEO Jim Hackett admitted yesterday that demand for driverless transportation could take many different forms and that Ford was rethinking how it would tailor its cars and mobility services for self-drive modes of transportation in the future.
News: Waymo Patent Shows Plans to Replace Steering Wheel & Pedals with Push Buttons
Waymo just received approval on a patent for a push-button console that replaces not only a steering wheel in a car but the brake and gas pedals, too. This reflects Alphabet's driverless arm could remain true to its original mantra of developing cars that pilot themselves without human intervention.
Today's Top News: Ford Tries to One Up Waymo with Removable Steering Wheel & Pedal Design
Google largely helped to pioneer the concept of a steering wheel- and pedal-free self-driving experience when it began testing its Firefly pod-like vehicles a few years ago.
Today's Top News: Waiting for Tesla's Reaction to Former Uber Engineer's 'Faketesla' Claims
Former Google and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski's scathing accusations challenging the physics behind Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk's claims about Autopilot should force Musk to make his case that self-drive cars don't need LiDAR in the next few months.
Today's Top News: Baidu Reportedly Thinks It Can Lead the World in Driverless by 2020
A top executive from Baidu's telematics division believes the company will become the word leader in driverless by 2020, according to a report in today's South China Morning Post.
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News: Tesla Will Need to Upgrade Autopilot Hardware for Level 4 — Despite What Musk Said
Elon Musk has repeatedly said Tesla models in production today have the requisite hardware to offer "full self-driving" capabilities. But for features more advanced than Level 3, Tesla will, in fact, have to revamp Autopilot's hardware to handle the extra computing load.
Today's Top News: Lyft Is Going to Keep the Dude in the Car
Ride-sharing firm Lyft says it will continue to rely on drivers in the near and long term even as it replaces them with driverless cars, Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's director of product, said during a Podcast with Recode.
News: Argo AI's First Driverless Car Is Spied in Pittsburgh
Argo AI is coming late to the party, but has begun testing a fleet of driverless cars in hopes of developing robo-taxi services to eventually compete against those that Waymo, Uber, Cruise Automation, and others plan to offer.
News: Cruise's Testing Strategy Revealed: Part MIT Brains, Part GM Muscle
Cruise Automation, the driverless car startup General Motors (GM) bought for $1 billion in 2016, is readying a formidable fleet of robo-taxis for rollout in cities throughout the US. But when it comes to details about how the company plans to realize these lofty goals, it's been fairly tight-lipped.
News: The Audi A8 Is Smart Enough to Read & React to Signposts
The Audi A8 may be short on the wow factor as the industry's first Level 3 car, but Audi has revealed some interesting details about one stand-out feature underneath the hood: the car's ability to self-pilot itself at stop signs and lights.
Today's Top News: Tesla Quietly Upgrades Autopilot Hardware
Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk has repeatedly said this year all Tesla models made since October 2016 have the requisite hardware for "full self-driving" capabilities, yet the company has reportedly begun to add a second graphics processor (GPU) to its computer platform for Autopilot — without officially saying why.
Today's Top News: Tesla Could Be Stretching Itself Thin by Chasing the Driverless Truck
Elon Musk's SpaceX is launching the world's most powerful rocket. The Tesla founder and CEO says the company is about to go through "manufacturing hell" to make delivery schedules for its new Tesla 3. Somehow, Musk says Tesla will offer Level 5 driving (so you can take a nap while your car drives you to and from work) within two years.
News: Mobileye Calling the Shots from Israel After Intel Acquisition
Intel's driverless division will be managed by Israel-based Mobileye, as the chip giant emerges from relative obscurity in the driverless space to become a major supplier after completing its $15.3-billion purchase of Mobileye this week.
Today's Top News: Cruise Comes in Third in Self-Drive App Race
Cruise Automation follows Waymo's and Uber's lead with its debut of a beta version of an app-based driverless ride-hailing service for its employees in San Francisco, ahead of a possible launch of a full-fledged commercial offering within four years.
News: DMV Accident Reports & Cruise's Driverless Videos Show How Dumb Human Drivers Are
Recently released accident reports by the state of California's Department of Motor Vehicles show humans did a lot of dumb things to cause accidents with General Motors' (GM) Cruise Automation driverless vehicles in San Francisco this year.
Today's Top News: Ex-Uber CEO Kalanick Is Not Coming Back — & That's Good for Driverless
Ex-Uber CEO and founder Travis Kalanick's bad and likely illegal behavior aside, his vision of not wanting to pay "the other dude in the car" has lead to a ground-breaking driverless test fleet.
Today's Top News: GM Plays It Safe with Cadillac Autopilot
General Motors (GM) seems to have gone to great lengths to avoid lawsuits as it launches its first hands-off driving system in its soon-to-be-launched Cadillac CT6.
News: A Fatal Airbus Crash Paints an Ugly Picture for the Future of Level 3 Cars
The fatal crash of Air France Flight 447 is one of the most tragic accidents in avionic history — while it also serves as a stark reminder of what can go wrong when humans rely too much on driverless vehicles.
Today's Top News: Lyft, Faraday Recruit Top Brass, but Finding Driverless Engineers Remains a Struggle
The ride-sharing firm Lyft and Faraday Future, a troubled electric carmaker and potential Tesla competitor, have quietly appointed new top executives, but like the rest of the industry, they struggle to find talent for their driverless programs.
Today's Top News: The Leaf's Propilot Falls Short as a Poor Man's Tesla Rival
Nissan has confirmed reports that the Nissan Leaf's Propilot option will go on sale in the US in September, but when it does, don't expect it to compete against the Tesla Model 3's driverless features.
Today's Top News: Maverick Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt Hires Controversial Jeep Hackers
Cruise Automation, General Motors' (GM) driverless car arm, has hired two hackers who were once seen by many as a safety threat to help find vulnerabilities in its self-drive car network.
Today's Top News: Unions Wise Up to Commercial Trucks
The AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Division, which represents 32 unions in the US, has successfully lobbied for the removal of 10,000-lb. and heavier commercial trucks from provisions in bills expected to pass that could allow for millions of driverless vehicles on public roads and streets, Bloomberg News reported.
Today's Top News: What Elon Musk Didn't Say at the Tesla Model 3 Launch Party
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk said during the Model 3 launch party Friday night that all Tesla cars in production have the same driverless hardware, signaling that Tesla's jump to Level 4 hinges on a software update — but Musk didn't exactly say that.
News: BMW Stealthily Tries to Recruit 2,000 Driverless Engineers
BMW seeks to hire 2,000 engineers for its driverless program ahead of the launch of its iNext Level 3 model in 2021, a source close to the company told Driverless.
News: Faraday Has Little Luck Filling Empty Engineer Slots, Left with Gutted Driverless Program
Faraday Future's all-electric super sports car concept attracted a lot of attention at CES earlier this year, but now it is struggling to replace key driverless engineers and program directors who left the company amid its recent financial troubles.
Today's Top News: Tesla's Moment of Truth as Model 3 Arrives, Intel & Mobileye Double Down on Driverless
All eyes will be on Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk tonight to see if he is reveals details about the status of Tesla's challenged Autopilot at tonight's official Model 3 launch party.
Today's Top News: Tesla Discretely Preps Autopilot Gearshift for Level 4 Before Everybody Else
Tesla's Autopilot self-drive interface in its new Model 3 signals the carmaker is already prepping its cars for Level 4 driving years ahead of the competition.
Today's Top News: A Multibillion-Dollar Investment by Softbank Could Revive Uber's Uncertain Driverless Program
The status of Uber's driverless program remains a big unknown amid the company's recent woes, but a reported multibillion-dollar shot in the arm by Japanese tech giant Softbank could change all that.
Today's Top News: Self-Touted 'Tesla of the Seas' Seeks Early Lead by Launching Pilotless Ship in 2018
A Norwegian carrier's launch of a pilotless container ship next year could lead the way to a new era in sea transportation and shipping if successful.
Infographic: Nvidia & Startups Are Big Winners in 2015–2017 Driverless Talent Shift
There has been a lot of comings and goings among senior engineers and research staff at a handful of companies with the pretensions of offering the technology that will underpin the driverless revolution.
Today's Top News: As Questions Mount About the Future of Uber's Driverless Program, Lyft Steps into the Fray
Lyft officially laid its stake in the ground to develop driverless fleets following its Friday announcement, but how fast it is catching up to ride-hailing competitor Uber's driverless initiative remains to be seen.
News: Multi-Cores, AI & Computer Parallelism — How Gaming Chips Drive Cars
Long before Nvidia figured out how to embed neural networks in its graphics processor units (GPUs) for driverless vehicles, it and other chipmakers were already making the same kinds of devices for 3D games and other apps.
Today's Top News: Tesla Jumps Aheads with a Truly 'Silk Smooth' Autopilot Update
Some drivers give Tesla's Autopilot update released this week rave reviews, after version 8.1 has taken longer than expected to live up to Elon Musk's "smooth as silk" Tweet from earlier this year.
Today's Top News: OpenAI Hacks Machine Vision and the Results Aren't Pretty
Research group OpenAI, a research institute co-founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, says it is possible to trick driverless cars' neural networks into mistaking images for something else.
News: Q&A with Senior Director Danny Shapiro: How Nvidia Is Working with Over 225 Different Driverless Customers
Nvidia's decades-long development of graphics processor units (GPU) for PCs has given it a major leg up in the driverless space.
Today's Top News: BMW, GM, Toyota Invest $114 Million in Camera Startup as the VC Spending Tap Gushes
Nauto, which develops driver-monitor cameras and algorithms for autonomous vehicles, is among a growing list of driverless startups able to attract tens of millions of dollars in funding after raising $159 million in its latest round of financing.
News: Who the Heck Is NOT Using Nvidia?
Nvidia has emerged as the indisputable leader in chips for Level 3 and even more advanced driverless applications, catching some of the world's largest semiconductor makers and automotive suppliers by surprise.
Today's Top News: Elon Musk Warns of Zombie Driverless Fleets
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk offered some insight into how hackers might seek to turn driverless cars into zombie fleets, but remained upbeat about what can be done about it.
Today's Top News: Hyundai Rushes to Offer Level 2, but After GM Launch
Hyundai Motor Company says it will launch its driverless tech ahead of schedule, but the Korean carmaker will remain behind mainstream rivals, including General Motors (GM), Nissan, and Honda.