Starting today, Phoenix residents can use the Uber app to hail a ride in a driverless Waymo vehicle. The two companies — former rivals turned frenemies (?) — first announced the partnership earlier this year. Tellingly, it’s only available in Arizona, and not California, where tensions around robotaxis are starting to get, well, tense.
The California DMV’s suspension of Cruise’s robotaxi permit in San Francisco is now reverberating down in Los Angeles. Los Angeles City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez is planning to file a motion today that urges state officials to “reign in the expansion of robotaxis” in the city. Waymo is in the process of beta testing a robotaxi service in LA, which is plans on expanding next year.
Soto-Martinez is being joined by the Teamsters union, which has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of driverless cars and trucks in the state.
During Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, an investor mentions that Mercedes says it’ll accept legal liability for its Level 3 autonomous system, and asks if Tesla will do the same. Musk replies with a laugh: “There’s a lot of people who assume we have legal liability... judging by the lawsuits.”
Musk also said FSD is only available in North America because in the US “you can deploy things at risk or take liability,” whereas other countries have extensive approval programs.
Houston is the next city in the US to get a robotaxi service, courtesy of Cruise, which just announced the launch today. The driverless vehicles will be available seven days a week from 9PM-6AM in Downtown, Midtown, East Downtown, Montrose, Hyde Park, and River Oaks neighborhoods. Robotaxi companies have been targeting bigger, more populous markets, as the pressure to start bringing in more revenue continues to grow. Waymo just started testing the waters in LA, and now Cruise is going after the fourth biggest city in the US.
This opinion piece in the New York Times argues we’re “driving blind” when it comes to autonomous vehicles, citing recent robotaxi crashes in San Francisco and the growing number of fatal Tesla Autopilot incidents. The writer argues that while the federal government regulates hardware, and the states oversee drivers, there’s no one testing to see whether the software operating these vehicles is up to snuff. And that amounts to “a loophole large enough for Elon Musk, General Motors and Waymo to drive thousands of cars through.”
[The New York Times]
