All posts tagged: Waymo

Tesla remote operator crashed a ‘Robotaxi’ in Houston, NHTSA data shows

Tesla remote operator crashed a ‘Robotaxi’ in Houston, NHTSA data shows

Published by skeptic

Tesla has filed four new “Robotaxi” crash reports with NHTSA, and the most revealing one involves a Tesla remote operator driving the vehicle into a tree stump in Houston. It’s the third crash Tesla has now reported involving a human operating the car remotely caused the collision — and the first one Tesla has formally coded as remote operation in its filing. What the Houston filing says The incident, report 13781-15395, happened in May in Houston. According to Tesla’s own narrative, the Model Y “was stopped on a dead end residential road” when it needed help getting out. “While the ADS was being supported remotely out of the dead end road, the vehicle entered a grassy slope,” Tesla wrote. “As the remote assistance operator continued to recover the vehicle, they made contact with a hidden tree stump.” Advertisement – scroll for more content The damage was minor — property damage only, no injuries, no airbag deployment, no tow, and a pre-crash speed of 2 mph. Tesla listed the Driver/Operator Type as “Remote (Commercial / Test),” …

TechCrunch Mobility: The battle over robotaxi rules

TechCrunch Mobility: The battle over robotaxi rules

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Last week, I wrote about Uber and Waymo and how their partnership appears to be deteriorating. I predicted the two companies would end up on opposing sides of autonomous vehicle policy. That wasn’t a guess. For the past several weeks, I’ve been talking to sources and digging through correspondence Uber sent to the D.C. Council, which is evaluating a proposed bill that would allow autonomous vehicles to operate in Washington, D.C. What I found: Uber and Waymo are already on opposite sides of the proposal, sparring behind the scenes and in public. Uber has made a particularly interesting argument in its effort to shape the rules that govern autonomous vehicles. Uber, which opposes the D.C. bill, argues it would displace for-hire human drivers and hand Waymo a de facto monopoly. Instead, it has lobbied for a …

Waymo appears to pause San Francisco service amidst power outage

Waymo appears to pause San Francisco service amidst power outage

Published by skeptic

Waymo said it’s making “temporary adjustments” to its robotaxi service in San Francisco amidst a power outage that appears to have affected around 7,000 PG&E customers in the city. According to a screenshot posted on social media, Waymo is telling SF customers that service is “temporarily paused” and that “freeway routes are unavailable.” When TechCrunch reached out to the Alphabet-owned company for comment, a spokesperson said in a statement, “We are making temporary adjustments to our service while we monitor local conditions. We know riders depend on us, and we will return to normal operations as soon as possible.” This isn’t the first time power outages have caused issues for Waymo. A number of Waymo vehicles stalled on city streets during a blackout in December, and a similar incident paralyzed traffic during a Golden Gate Bridge fireworks show on the Fourth of July. As a result, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has called for tougher state regulations to “adequately address how autonomous vehicles operate during major incidents, planned or not.” Source link

San Francisco mayor pushes for tougher rules after the Waymo traffic fiasco

San Francisco mayor pushes for tougher rules after the Waymo traffic fiasco

Published by skeptic

It turns out that even San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who once declared that the city should be a testbed for emerging tech, has his limits. Especially when that emerging tech creates a massive hours-long traffic jam that leaves thousands at a standstill. Mayor Lurie has asked state regulators to bolster rules for autonomous vehicles nearly two weeks after Waymo robotaxis became immobile in heavy July 4 traffic, ran out of power, and blocked key streets, further compounding the gridlock. The traffic jam, which trapped municipal shuttles, became a citywide problem that affected thousands of people. In his letter to the state Department of Transportation, which was viewed by TechCrunch, Lurie pointed to two events — a widespread power outage in December and the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks show on July 4 that attracted 100,000 spectators — both of which led to dozens of stranded Waymo vehicles and paralyzed traffic. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported on the letter. The events, he said in the letter, “demonstrated that California’s current regulatory framework does not adequately …

Uber’s Autonomous Vehicle Strategy: Slow Their Adoption

Uber’s Autonomous Vehicle Strategy: Slow Their Adoption

Published by skeptic

A decade ago, then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said he saw autonomous vehicles as an existential threat to the ride-hail company’s business model. “What would happen if we weren’t a part of that future? If we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by,” Kalanick told Business Insider. In the years since, Uber has settled on a strategy that, rather than see it build and operate its own self-driving cars, puts it on track to become the place where riders can get connected with any ride, driven by a human or robot. “We think there are going to be many AV players around the world, and we want to be the go-to commercial platform for all of them,” now-CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told investors in 2024. Since then, the company has signed agreements with more than 25 major robotaxi players, with driverless vehicles from Waymo, Nuro, Baidu, and Volkswagen’s MOIA either available or soon to be available on the Uber app in several global cities. Now, according to documents viewed by WIRED and …

Waymo appears to pause San Francisco service amidst power outage

TechCrunch Mobility: A robotaxi ultimatum

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! I am back from vacation. What did I miss? Turns out, quite a lot — including the end of the Uber-Waymo partnership in Phoenix. Uber and Waymo still have robotaxi service partnerships in Atlanta and Austin. The question is not if, but when will these agreements end? But that isn’t the most intriguing question, in my opinion. I am far more intrigued by how these two companies will behave once the remaining partnerships end.  There is already tension with Uber executives taking not-so-subtle shots at Waymo. I expect that once the partnerships end, these thinly veiled barbs will be replaced with more direct action. One battleground will be policy, specifically markets where robotaxi companies are angling to get access.  This week, we saw another interesting development in the autonomous vehicle industry on the federal stage. National …

Privacy concerns raised after teens detained by police from a Waymo robotaxi : NPR

Privacy concerns raised after teens detained by police from a Waymo robotaxi : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

A Waymo robotaxi drives in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood this week. Heather Diehl/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Heather Diehl/Getty Images Police in San Mateo, Calif., posted Monday on social media that they had apprehended a pair of teenagers from a Waymo driverless robotaxi after the company alerted authorities to suspected criminal activity. It’s the latest incident involving video surveillance of passengers and others by autonomous vehicles — raising questions about the limits of privacy in such vehicles. The Facebook post by the San Mateo County Police said: “Parents do you know where your teens are? @waymo does!” The 15-year-olds were allegedly drinking alcohol and shooting toy guns from the car, according to the police. They said Waymo’s systems detected behavior that then triggered a safety response, after which the company disabled the vehicle and contacted police. Waymo’s cars, equipped with an array of cameras, microphones and other sensors to monitor passengers and other nearby vehicles, are becoming more common in cities across the United States. Experts say the detention of the two teens …

New bill would ban Tesla’s camera-only Robotaxi, not Waymo

New bill would ban Tesla’s camera-only Robotaxi, not Waymo

Published by skeptic

New Jersey lawmakers are advancing a bill that would require driverless commercial vehicles to carry cameras plus two additional sensor types — a mandate Tesla’s camera-only Robotaxi can’t meet. The proposed law, S1677, would effectively lock Tesla out of the most densely populated US state unless it adds the radar and lidar hardware that Elon Musk has spent years insisting his cars don’t need. What the bill actually requires State Senator Andrew Zwicker, a physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, sponsored the bill after riding in a Waymo in Phoenix. He says the legislation is about safety, not any single company. “This is not anti-Tesla. I’m pro-New Jersey safety,” Zwicker told The Verge. Advertisement – scroll for more content The bill sets up a three-year pilot program with hard requirements. Operators must equip fully driverless vehicles with cameras plus two other sensing technologies — in practice, radar and lidar. They must also complete at least 50,000 miles of supervised testing with a human safety driver in the state before removing the driver, report every …

Waymo Plans to Expand Driverless Cars to 4 More Major Cities This Year

Waymo Plans to Expand Driverless Cars to 4 More Major Cities This Year

Published by skeptic

Self-driving company Waymo added four more cities where it will service riders: Denver, San Diego, Las Vegas and Tampa. Waymo’s parent company, Alphabet, announced the expansion on Wednesday.  Waymo’s robotaxi service is currently available in big US cities such as San Francisco, San Antonio, Orlando, Phoenix and many others. Since rolling out Waymo’s self-driving cars, Alphabet has relied on electronic vehicles that use AI to detect objects under distinct weather conditions. Its fleet is predominantly the fully electric Jaguar I-Pace, though it recently added the roomier Ojai, a modified Zeekr vehicle.  Waymo’s newest vehicle, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, will be available with a specialist behind the wheel to validate the hardware and software before unleashing a rider-only rollout to the public. Waymo stated in a blog post that the robotaxis being added in the new cities will initially be available only to Alphabet employees, but will be open to other riders soon. The self-driving company has made headlines since 2020 for introducing autonomous taxis to the public, but not always positively.  In recent months, nearly 4,000 …

Feds demand autonomous vehicle companies stop interfering with first responders

Feds demand autonomous vehicle companies stop interfering with first responders

Published by skeptic

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator Jonathan Morrison issued a directive Wednesday to autonomous vehicle (AV) developers, stating that it is unacceptable for their vehicles to interfere with first responders or law enforcement. Morrison noted in the letter that the agency has “identified a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders,” citing instances in which these vehicles drove into active emergency scenes, blocked the paths of ambulances and firefighters, or failed to recognize and respond to basic safety conditions like flashing lights, flares, smoke, fire, and traffic cones. The agency has demanded that AV developers present their “solutions” to this problem by the end of the month. “Let me be clear: the inability to detect and appropriately respond to such situations represents a functional insufficiency,” Morrison’s letter reads. “Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme ‘edge cases.’ As such, NHTSA is today issuing a call to action for AV developers and operators to immediately focus their resources on fixing this issue.” The agency doesn’t explicitly call out any …