Protesters stop Waymo and Cruise self-driving cars with only a traffic cone : NPR

Table Of Content

• Now in Phoenix
• Watch: Experts say we're decades from fully autonomous cars. Here's why.
• GM’s Cruise Loses Its Self-Driving License in San Francisco After a Robotaxi Dragged a Person
• The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
• Lucid slashes prices for its luxury EVs for the third time in seven months

Maybe a human wouldn’t do it exactly that way, it becomes a national headline,” he said. GM-backed Cruise is “just days away” from regulatory approval to begin mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, the company’s CEO, Kyle Vogt, said at an investor conference Thursday. Cruise plans eventually to expand its offerings beyond San Francisco with four- to six-passenger Origins but needs permission from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration to put the shuttle on public roads.

Now in Phoenix

In some of my reporting, we found that people are starting to do debaucherous things or unseemly things in the car. We found a handful of people who had either had sex or hooked up in the back of a robotaxi because there’s just no driver to tell you you can’t do that. The companies obviously don’t plug this as something that you should do in their vehicles. While Cruise has been sidelined in San Francisco, another robotaxi operated by Waymo is continuing to give rides throughout the city. Waymo, which began as as secret project within Google more than a decade ago, has been running another robotaxi service in Phoenix for the past three years. Now Cruise is being forced to slam on the brakes on its operations after the DMV concluded its robotaxis posed "an unreasonable risk to public safety," according to a statement issued by the agency.

Watch: Experts say we're decades from fully autonomous cars. Here's why.

She says the agency was shown video of the entire incident, including the pull-over, the day after the crash. The DMV says Cruise will either have to appeal its decision or provide information about how it has addressed its technology’s “deficiencies” in order to win back its permit. Technological issues aside, what really put Cruise in hot water late last year was its response to the incident. Regulators accused the company of withholding information about the crash, only sharing that a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian who had been flung into its path after first being struck by a human-driven vehicle. Prior to that incident, Cruise had been announcing launches in new cities — including Dallas, Houston and Miami — at a startling pace.

GM’s Cruise Loses Its Self-Driving License in San Francisco After a Robotaxi Dragged a Person

Cruise announces steps to get its robotaxi fleet back on city streets - San Francisco Chronicle

Cruise announces steps to get its robotaxi fleet back on city streets.

Posted: Tue, 09 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

You’ll see the wheel moving and spinning and the pedals going, but there won’t be any driver up front. It’s very surreal because in a lot of ways the experience of riding in a robotaxi is just like an Uber. Members of Safe Street Rebel place a cone on a self-driving Cruise car in San Francisco. General Motors Co., which has ambitious goals for Cruise, has taken a significant hit this week. The Detroit automaker had been expecting annual revenue of $1 billion from Cruise by 2025 — a big jump from the $106 million in revenue last year. The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week revoked the license for Cruise, which recently began transporting passengers throughout San Francisco.

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Eventually, Cruise drops the human driver and tests the vehicles autonomously. A ride-hailing service will then become available first to employees and then to customers who have signed up for the service. The service area and hours of operation usually start on a limited basis, often at night, and slowly expand. In public comments at the hearing today, and in others submitted in writing ahead of the vote, a number of residents and state and local groups said they believed the robotaxis held great promise for their communities.

Cruise has said it will bring its self-driving services to Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, Miami, Atlanta, and Nashville. Waymo said earlier this month that it would expand into Austin, in addition to an already planned expansion in LA. The lead-up to the commission's vote prompted the Safe Street Rebel group to start "coning," as they call it.

Cruise ridehail services are not available at this time, but you can join the waitlist to be one of the first. We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities.

Cruise had to back off plans to deploy robotaxis in 2019 because it needed more time for performance and safety checks. The suspensions mark a serious setback for the driverless vehicle industry, which has faced charges of under-regulation even as Cruise and others plan to expand to new cities across the US. Cruise is still permitted to operate robotaxis in San Francisco with a human safety driver behind the wheel—which is how the company initially began to test self-driving cars in the city. For Cruise and Waymo, the approval was an important step toward turning billions spent chasing a signature dream of the tech industry into a viable business—and to delivering returns to external investors that have backed the projects.

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GM reported a $561 million first-half loss attributable to Cruise. Hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King will guide you through the most important stories of the day. Today, Explained is now available on public radio stations across the US. For more daily news offerings, check out Vox's weekday newsletter. Maybe that makes me a stingy rider, but I don’t really feel the need to tip the technology. Self-driving taxis are ferrying passengers across San Francisco and Phoenix, and they could be coming to a street near you very soon.

In San Francisco, the futuristic nature of driverless vehicles has become a tourist attraction. According to an Oct. 20 letter that was made public Thursday, since beginning this probe the NHSTA has received five other reports of Cruise AVs unexpectedly breaking with no obstacles ahead. Each case involved AVs operating without human supervision and resulted in rear-end collisions.

This prompted the state’s department of motor vehicles to revoke its licenses and suspend its fleet. Two people dressed in dark colors and wearing masks dart into a busy street on a hill in San Francisco. They sprint toward a driverless car and quickly set the cone on the hood.

An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months. The group's goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco's streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology. Waymo’s expansion to Los Angeles will bring autonomous for-profit taxis to the nation’s second-largest city — and to a city long synonymous with car travel. Waymo already operates commercial robotaxi services in San Francisco and Phoenix. The situation is loaded with irony, as the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday voted 3 to 1 amid great public controversy to allow a massive robotaxi expansion.

On August 10, the California Public Utilities Commission handed Cruise and Waymo a victory by allowing them to operate across San Francisco at all hours and charge fares. During a six-and-a-half-hour hearing, hundreds of residents testified for and against the robotaxis. Supporters claimed they were safer and more reliable than human-driven vehicles, and disabled people said they were more accessible, especially for service animals. Opponents, including transit and fire officials, argued that the taxis had repeatedly gotten in the way of emergency responders and had become a nuisance. Seattle and DC are two out of 16 total cities in which Cruise is either mapping, testing or deploying its self-driving cars. Cruise’s formula for rollouts typically starts with entering a new market with test vehicles to collect data and map, followed by AV testing with a human driver in the front seat.