Today it was revealed that Avis Budget Group will now support and maintain Waymo's driverless car fleet in Phoenix, the company's first public trial of self-driving cars. This is an unprecedented partnership in the autonomous vehicle field and conveys the steps driverless companies are taking to make their vehicles more accessible to the public.
Cruise Automation is actively seeking to recruit a lead engineer to head its development efforts of 3D maps with expertise in city environments, signaling the GM driverless unit's move towards a mobility-as-a-service business model.
Nissan began to offer Level 2 driving capacities in a mainstream model when it debuted its ProPilot self-drive option for its Serena minivan in Japan last year.
The US driverless market has become a competitive – and crowded – arena, with big names like Google, Apple, Uber, and even Intel intent on leading the pack. Not to be outdone, the EU is also getting in on the automated car action with self-driving fleets launching in both the UK and the Netherlands within the next two years.
Udacity, the online education startup that set out to train a school of self-driving car engineers, is now spinning off into its own autonomous tech company called Voyage.
In Bhopal, India, a place nestled in between the royally pink city of Jaipur and the dry (i.e., alcohol forbidden) state of Gujarat, is a team of developers determined to make a fully driverless car suitable to the complexities of Indian traffic. An algorithm elaborate enough has yet to be made by any other company, but is the fundamental key to handling the intuitive habits of Indian drivers, the often intense and gridlocked traffic, and the country's vast expanse of jarring roads.
As Intel steps up their investment in driverless technology with a $15 billion acquisition of Mobileye, so have automotive supplier Bosch and NVIDIA teamed up to manufacturer driverless car systems with the much-awaited Xavier chip.
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.
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.
General Motors Co. (GM) is set to expand their fleet of driverless cars in San Francisco, Detroit, and Scottsdale, according to documents filed by the company.
Japan is in the process of curbing its aging population and mature workforce. According to The Diplomat, the country's population has been declining at a steady rate. To meet future productivity demands in commercial and industrial sectors, local officials are turning to self-driving technology, including truck platooning, where three or five vehicles travel autonomously in a string formation. This practice, according to a study by MIT, can reduce fuel consumption by up to 20% (more about thi...
Disengagement report numbers for self-driving car testing in 2016 on public roads in California were just released, and the biggest point we can make about them is that Waymo is very far ahead of their competitors in almost every metric.
Google's former Self-Driving Car project, now graduated from Alphabet's X division as Waymo, has found a collaborator and potential new partner in Honda. This is an interesting turn of events given traditional automakers' reluctance to work with driverless-car startups over the years.
We've had to resort to actual spying to get information on the highly anticipated Tesla Model 3, but today Elon Musk himself gave out some exciting news. The Model 3 is going to be officially unveiled in July, according to Musk's Twitter. Musk also revealed that Tesla will unveil their electric semi-truck in September. It will be interesting to see if Tesla plans to add Autopilot to that truck and get themselves in the autonomous truck game with Otto.
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.
The race to the driverless finish line just got more challenging as Apple seems to have joined the pack. Friday, the global superpower secured a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that allows them to test autonomous cars in the state.
