I experienced the City NGP function under XNGP in a P7i in Shanghai, and later in a G6 in Guangzhou. With my second experience I soon realized it was a tale of two cities. In Shanghai it was quite smooth, and at least one of the interventions made was due to me being disoriented rather … Read more
Paid autonomous vehicle service is coming to Los Angeles, thanks to a decision by California regulators today to allow Alphabet subsidiary Waymo to operate in the city. Under the new ruling, Waymo is also permitted to launch service in a large section of the San Francisco Peninsula. The decision by the California Public Utilities Commission … Read more
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Driverless cars and planes are no longer the stuff of the future. In the city of San Francisco alone, two taxi companies have collectively logged 8 million miles of autonomous driving through August 2023. And more than 850,000 autonomous aerial vehicles, or drones, are registered … Read more
Apple’s secretive vehicle project doesn’t have much to show for its six years of work, at least publicly. But records submitted by the company to a California agency show that Apple went on an autonomous testing jag last year, almost quadrupling the number of miles it tested on public roads compared to 2022 and jumping … Read more
A law firm hired by the General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary Cruise to investigate the company’s response to a gruesome San Francisco crash last year found that the company failed to fully disclose disturbing details to regulators, the tech company said today in a blog post. The incident in October led California regulators to suspend Cruise’s … Read more
Kyle Vogt, the CEO of self-driving car developer Cruise who founded the company before its acquisition by General Motors in 2016, resigned this evening. His announcement comes amid upheaval at the company, which last month had its permit to operate its groundbreaking robotaxi service in San Francisco suspended by state regulators. “The status quo on … Read more
In August 2016, WIRED visited the San Francisco offices of a young startup recently snapped up by a surprising buyer. General Motors acquired three-year-old Cruise for a reported $1 billion in hopes the straitlaced Detroit automaker could coopt the self-driving technology tipped to disrupt the auto industry. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt—a scrappy Twitch cofounder who … Read more
Cruise, the self-driving arm of General Motors, said late today it had halted its robotaxi service across the US and would no longer operate its vehicles without safety drivers behind the wheel. That decision to hit the brakes comes two days after California regulators suspended the driverless-car company’s permit in San Francisco, alleging that Cruise … Read more
Cruise says the vehicle then stopped again. Emergency responders arrived soon after, according to TV station NBC Bay Area, and the San Francisco Fire Department said the victim was “extricated from beneath the vehicle using rescue tools.” The department said she was transported to the hospital with multiple traumatic injuries. The human driver of the … Read more
On the busy streets of suburban Berlin, just south of Tempelhofer Feld, a white Kia is skillfully navigating double-parked cars, roadworks, cyclists, and pedestrians. Dan, the driver, strikes up a conversation with his passengers, remarking on the changing traffic lights and the sound of an ambulance screaming past in the other direction. But Dan isn’t … Read more