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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: 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: 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 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.

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.

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.

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: This 2017 LiDAR Bottleneck Is Causing a Modern-Day Gold Rush

One major component of Level 4 and Level 5 driverless cars is in very short supply. Venture capitalists and engineers from around the world are racing to fill the LiDAR production, price, and performance void.

News: The Definitive Guide to the Levels of Automation for Driverless Cars

Not only has there been difficulty finding consensus on a name for driverless, autonomous, self-driving, or automated vehicles, there is also the issue of what we actually mean when we say a vehicle is self-driving, automated, and so on.

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.

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: 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.

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.

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.