Autonomous Cars

The Rideshare Guy’s Harry Campbell got ahold of a survey asking about a potential Waymo membership program, with potential perks such as cash back and discounts for future robotaxi rides. The monthly plans could cost between $9.99-$29.99. As Campbell notes, with a small but ardent customer base, it makes sense that Waymo is trying to lock in loyalty of its fans, especially as it looks to grow to new markets. Still, it begs the question whether the company is jumping the gun by introducing a membership program while operating in only three cities. And unlike Uber, Waymo doesn’t have a food delivery business with which to whet appetites.

Customers who book a robotaxi to select LA transit stations can get a $3 credit that can be applied to future Waymo rides. The promotion will run February 4-April 1, and is specifically geared toward helping LA residents get to LAX via bus. (Waymo still isn’t making airport runs in LA, nor does it operate on the freeways — yet.) Waymo says the promotion will help it learn how customers use (or don’t use) its self-driving cars as first- and last-mile options for public transportation. But some experts worry that autonomous vehicles will siphon riders from transit, which could lead to service cuts.

The Swedish automaker is already working with Aurora on its autonomous big rigs, and now its adding Waabi to its list of partners. Raquel Urtasun, the former chief scientist at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, founded Waabi in 2021 to be a more “AI-centric approach” to autonomous vehicles.

Waymo just flipped the switch from supervised to unsupervised in Atlanta, where it aims to eventually launch a commercial robotaxi service later this year through an exclusive partnership with Uber. But for now, the Alphabet-owned company’s vehicles will only be available to employees. Waymo is currently operating in San Francisco, Phoenix, and LA, and is still operating under a waitlist in Austin. Also on deck: Miami.

It’s a big move for the robotaxi company, especially if they want to cut down on trip times amid competition with Uber and other human-powered services. The company said that a 17 mile trip from Santa Monica Pier to the Broad museum utilizing Interstate 10 would be 50 percent faster than local roads. Waymo has been slowly expanding its geofence to include more freeways, most notably in Phoenix.

This time it occurred during an “illegal” street takeover near the Beverly Center in LA. Video from Fox 11 shows a crowd of people basically dismantling the driverless car piece by piece, and then using the broken pieces to smash the windows. This is going to happen more frequently as these cars spread to more cities, but obviously you are taking a huge risk when vandalizing a car that it literally covered in cameras.

This week, the Biden administration finalized a rule that effectively bans connected vehicles from China. So naturally some of us were wondering how that would affect Waymo’s next-gen robotaxis, which are built by Zeekr in China. Now that it’s had a few days to review the rule, Waymo assures us that everything’s cool.

Sophia Tung, who ran a 24/7 livestream of a Waymo parking lot that went viral last year, just uploaded this fascinating video about her attempt to hail a driverless car in China. Along the way, she runs into a number of problems, including pedestrian-unfriendly infrastructure and a lack of available cars. This leaves me wondering whether the US should be as scared of China’s AV industry as they have been.

The automaker has received the green light to push new Drive Pilot software that enables its cars to operate as fast as 95km/h (just shy of 60mph) on the Autobahn.

Zheng Gao worked at Tesla for eight years, most recently as head of autopilot hardware design. He also spent nine years at Apple on its connector and input device product design team. At Zoox, he’ll lead the hardware engineering team, where he’ll be under pressure to meet the Amazon-owned company’s deadline to launch a commercial robotaxi service in 2025. Zoox’s co-founder has previously dinged Tesla for promoting self-driving technology that “doesn’t work.”

In a regulatory filing, Microsoft said it would “record an impairment charge of approximately $800 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025” tied to GM’s decision to defund its robotaxi subsidiary Cruise. Microsoft has been a minority investor in Cruise and a strategic partner since 2021. For example, Cruise used Azure to manage its (now defunct) robotaxi fleet.