All posts tagged: self-driving cars

Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Becomes ‘Assisted Driving’ in Europe

Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Becomes ‘Assisted Driving’ in Europe

Published by skeptic

Tesla’s most advanced driver-assistance feature is named Full Self-Driving (Supervised), but it can’t actually drive itself. While the feature can handle tasks like accelerating, braking, steering, and parking, the automaker requires drivers to stay alert and intervene at all times. Now, the company has officially renamed it to Tesla Assisted Driving (TAD) in Europe as it works to convince regulators to allow its use on public roads. Tesla offered to change the name, according to a statement by the German Transport Ministry. The statement says that German Transport Minister Steffen Bilger found the “FSD” name “somewhat misleading.” After discussions with Tesla last month, Bilger said he would now advocate for European regulators to approve the feature “as quickly as possible.” The EU will likely vote on its approval by the end of the year. On Friday, Tesla began using the Tesla Assisted Driving language on its European sales website. The automaker didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Tesla has resisted changing the feature’s name for years, even defending it in court. Last year, …

Your Driverless Cab Is Spying on You

Your Driverless Cab Is Spying on You

Published by skeptic

One afternoon this past summer, a self-driving Waymo pulled into a parking lot in San Mateo County, California, and stayed there until the police arrived. Local cops had gotten a 911 call from Waymo staffers—humans, it should be said—who were viewing the car’s passengers through cameras installed inside the vehicle. It looked like two teens were shooting a black handgun out the window of the vehicle, playing with it and drinking between shots, a police report said. The story has a happy(ish) ending: The gun was shooting water-filled Orbeez, not bullets. But the incident drew attention to Waymo’s surveillance system. The cars are equipped with automated tech that can flag the presence of a firearm inside, the company said. The outsides of self-driving cars are studded with cameras, which help them “see” the world around them. (Most also use other sensors, including radar and lidar.) Less appreciated are the cameras inside the vehicles, which companies say are essential to keeping riders safe and enforcing their rules. Earlier this year, Waymo said it used its cabin …

2 Driverless Cars Crashed Going 155 mph. That Could Be a Good Thing

2 Driverless Cars Crashed Going 155 mph. That Could Be a Good Thing

Published by skeptic

The grandstands erupted with shock as engineers clutched their heads in the paddock. One driverless race car, produced by the company PoliMove, slammed into Unimore’s slowing vehicle in an event held by the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL). At the famous racing track in Imola, Italy, Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, both cars crashed in an area called Rivazza. This is the circuit’s final sequence, made up of corners that are notoriously difficult to navigate. Formula 1 champions have met a similar fate here. But this time, the impact posed no danger to the drivers because there weren’t any. Launched in 2024, A2RL sought to introduce self-driving cars to the motorsport to test the boundaries of their current capabilities. And this year’s race at Imola revealed those edges, demonstrating of the gap between the computational abilities of autonomous vehicles and their capacity to respond when something goes wrong. Only two of the five cars in the final completed the race. The UAE’s Kinetiz finished first, followed by Germany’s Constructor Racing. PoliMove clocked in …

Thieves Stole ‘Nvidia’ Trailers. They Got 20 Tons of Sand

Thieves Stole ‘Nvidia’ Trailers. They Got 20 Tons of Sand

Published by skeptic

On Thursday morning, a top executive at self-driving truck developer PlusAI received an unexpected congratulatory text message from an acquaintance. “I have been proud of you for your adventure and success at Plus. Just saw two of your trucks near my work place! :)” the message said. But PlusAI’s trucks weren’t supposed to be near this person’s office, in Newark, California. As of the last the company knew, the trailers were docked outside its warehouse, half a mile away. Soon, according to a police statement, cops were on the scene to help recover the two trailers, emblazoned with logos for PlusAI and Nvidia, the most valuable company in the world. The two companies are working together on AI software and autonomous truck technology. That’s when PlusAI employees gave police a hint as to why whoever hooked their own cabs up to the trailers and drove away might have abandoned the whole thing after breaking them open: Each trailer was full of about 20,000 pounds of sand. “PlusAI uses simulated loads in its trailers to assist …

Meet the Academics Trying to Stop You From Having Sex in Robotaxis

Meet the Academics Trying to Stop You From Having Sex in Robotaxis

Published by skeptic

Pavlo Bazilinskyy still can’t believe he was on PornHub for work. He’s an assistant professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and has spent more than a decade researching AI-driven interactions between humans and robots. But he found himself typing “public transport” into the search bar of a very specific website’s “amateur section.” 297 hits. “People are hard to predict,” Bazilinskyy says. It’s why he researches what he does. So his prurient pursuit had a point. Robotaxis without cabbies behind the wheel have started picking up passengers in a handful of countries, including the US. Meanwhile, there’s a long history of people getting up to antisocial behavior inside the quasi-private or straight-up public spaces of trains, planes, and automobiles—think the prom night limo, the “Mile High Club,” Tom Cruise in slow motion aboard the Chicago L in Risky Business, the stuff he found on PornHub. What might riders do when there’s no authority figure inside a vehicle to say, “Hey, stop that!”? What do they do? Can people be convinced to stop …

How Self-Driving Cars Might Change Crash Testing Forever

How Self-Driving Cars Might Change Crash Testing Forever

Published by skeptic

In a video posted on X, a Tesla enthusiast hops into what was once the driver’s seat of a new matte gold Cybercab. “Once” because the vehicle, which officially hit the streets earlier this month as part of Tesla’s Robotaxi ride-hail service, doesn’t have a steering wheel or brake pedals. For the person in the front seat, this opens up new possibilities. Eat, game, watch, work. Or doze. To help you catch some z’s, the enthusiast demonstrates that the Cybercab’s seats can recline. “You can really go back,” he says. “You can really just sleep here.” Or maybe don’t. In the official Cybercab rider guide, Tesla says passengers in its autonomous vehicles should keep their seat backs reclined no more than 35 degrees from vertical, with their seatbelts snug across their hips and their feet flat on the floor. Doing so “reduces the risk of injury in a collision or sudden stop.” (Tesla did not respond to WIRED’s questions for this story.) Safety researchers say Tesla’s right here. In fact, passengers sitting in less-than-standard positions …

Lyft Sees a Future for Its Drivers in a Driverless World: Servicing Waymos

Lyft Sees a Future for Its Drivers in a Driverless World: Servicing Waymos

Published by skeptic

This week, Lyft riders in Nashville, Tennessee, who request a ride on the app might get matched with a new driver: a robot. A new partnership between the ride-hail company and Waymo, the self-driving-vehicle developer, will integrate self-driving rides into Lyft’s platform. (Riders can also request a driverless ride through Waymo’s own app; service there started in April.) The rollout marks a new milestone for Lyft, which has worked with other, smaller self-driving vehicle companies in the US, but never with a partner as big as Waymo, which operates in 14 US metros. Lyft executives also see the partnership as a continuation of a conversation the ride-hail company has been having for a few years now with its hundreds of thousands of US drivers. Lyft, like its competitor Uber, insists that its platform will be a “hybrid network” for a long while yet, as human drivers work alongside robot ones. But it’s hard to imagine the transition won’t upend life for some of the millions of professional drivers who work in the US today. “We’ve …

Tesla’s Cybercab Officially Launches Today. It’s Already Under Investigation

Tesla’s Cybercab Officially Launches Today. It’s Already Under Investigation

Published by skeptic

Tesla’s Cybercab, a distinctive two-seater without a steering wheel or brake pedals, is set to start picking up members of the public in Austin, Texas, this evening. But the vehicle is already under investigation by the US federal government, which is probing whether it meets federal safety standards. The investigation comes just hours after the electric automaker welcomed hundreds of fans to downtown Austin to ride in the driverless Cybercabs. Tesla plans to deploy the vehicles on its Robotaxi ride-hail network, which is currently operating in a handful of cities in Texas and Florida. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is updating vehicle standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy on public roads. It’s currently tweaking eight rules, including those requiring car parts that driverless cars don’t really need: brake pedals, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But for now, years-old standards remain in place. Meanwhile, unusually shaped robotaxi companies have been told to apply for an exemption from federal rules before they start picking up passengers. Amazon subsidiary Zoox, whose …

Tesla’s Make-or-Break Cybercab Had a Quiet Debut

Tesla’s Make-or-Break Cybercab Had a Quiet Debut

Published by skeptic

A Tesla launch event tends to cause a hoopla. Fans crowd into an event space; loud electronic beats are the warm up act. Finally, the star himself, the ringmaster of this electric circus, CEO Elon Musk, emerges to a roar. There are demos, powerful verbs, and sometimes, a “one more thing,” a last-minute surprise product unveiling. Fans and investors the world over look on—and post—online. But for the road debut of the Cybercab, the driverless car that Tesla promises is not only the future of the company but also the global economy, an event in Austin came with no livestream. Invitees, many of them online Tesla influencers, were reportedly barred from posting about the event until hours after it started. And Musk wasn’t there at all. It was a somewhat peculiar start for the Cybercab, a matte gold two-seater first introduced in 2024. Now 45 of the vehicles, which do not have steering wheels or pedals, are registered to operate on Tesla’s robotaxi network in Texas. On Thursday night, after the news embargo lifted, the …

The Cybercab Is Almost Here. Now Comes the Hard Part

The Cybercab Is Almost Here. Now Comes the Hard Part

Published by skeptic

Matte gold, sloped, and steering-wheel-free, the Tesla Cybercab seems designed to catch the eyes of looky-loos. Now rubberneckers may have more opportunities: Tesla is set to host an event on Thursday at its Austin, Texas, headquarters to debut the Cybercab. Tesla first rolled out a prototype Cybercab at a flashy event on the Warner Bros. lot in 2024. This week’s unveiling will likely mark the vehicle’s official introduction to the electric-auto maker’s small ride-hail service. It has operated a pilot program in Austin since last summer, and has since expanded to a handful of other cities in Texas and Florida, with permits to launch in Arizona and Nevada. (A “robotaxi” service in the San Francisco Bay Area is not legally permitted to operate without drivers behind the wheel.) Before the event, Tesla added 51 Cybercabs to its fleet of vehicles registered to operate in Texas (263 Model Ys are also registered). “The streets won’t be the same anymore,” Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, posted last month on X. When an X user asked …