More than that, I think the ride-hailing business is just the fist volley in the self driving vehicle space. It’s a short jump from there to self driving trucks, self driving package delivery, self driving private vehicles, and on and on.
Cruise was nixed by GM execs, whom I believe were looking for whatever excuse they could find to shut the operation down. They simply couldn't afford to stay in the game for the long haul. Cruise was under pressure to appear more capable than they were, and they took risks.
Waymo is distinguished in that it doesn't need to pander to nervous investors to keep getting money. The company is Sergei and Larry's baby. Google's founders will ensure that Waymo is patronized until it can stand on it's own.
Cruise's self driving license was suspended because humans displayed poor judgement by omitting from the official report details of their stopped car dragging a knocked-down accident victim under the car for dozens of feet. They took "risks" alright, and their harebrained cover-up was discovered by chance by the oversight body.
I believe any driver who covers up the details of injuries in an accident permanently lose their license, because they'll definitely do it again. What good is a self-driving subsidiary that can't operate on public roads?
They don't need to "catch up" to Waymo, because of the niche.
https://bigrigs.com.au/2024/04/18/driverless-trucks-trial-be...
2 trucks?! I suppose that's the minimum number required to make your pluralization correct.
I will stand on my earlier statement regarding this particular outfit: they'll need to catch up because Waymo started class 8 variants in 2021 https://waymo.com/blog/search/?t=Waymo%20Via
And Volvo rolled a class 8 as well.
Lo and behold:
>A six-month trial of driverless trucks on public Victorian roads has been put on hold just hours before it was meant to begin after the transport union labelled it “shambolic” and “sneaky”
> "the futures of our truck drivers are jeopardised due to this poorly executed plan."
> “It’s unacceptable that these trials are being pushed by corporations that continue to disadvantage our hard-working mums and dads that work day in, day out to carry Victorians.”
Now this sounds far more like the Australia I know.
Looks like the entire trial was scrapped due to union pressure and never resumed. Same reason we can't even have Driver-Only Operation on NSW trains, despite specifically purchasing DOO trains that operate safely worldwide.
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/-shambolic---victorian-dr...
One promising self driving truck startup, Aurora, was forced to put a safety driver back in the driver's seat after testing in May.
Comma.ai is probably the purchase I'm most happy with this year (to be fair though, I buy a lot of crap off Temu). Drives are now just "get on the freeway, and just chill." Pay enough attention because it's not collected to GPS and just in case something goes wrong. So to be clear, Comma.ai is not autonomous driving, it's classified as an ADAS, advanced driving assistance program. It just makes driving suck that much less, especially in stop and go traffic, for $1,000, and compatible with recent vehicles that have built-in lane guidance features. Waymo's got to be light years ahead of them, given how much money they've spent, so it's my belief that Waymo's taking it very slow and cautious, and that their technology is much more advanced than we've been told.
Short range drones are being used in Australia.
And I heard of at least one company working with apartment architects to standardize a “port” on the building exterior to which a truck/robot would connect to “inject” packages to the inside.
Last I read (late 2023 IIRC) these were being cancelled in various areas, if not everywhere? People in neighborhoods were getting annoyed by the noise of drones buzzing overhead.
Sadly, this would still be an improvement on many smaller delivery services that especially Amazon is fond of using.
But to be serious, there may be a way of doing it, it just seems very far off unless you're talking about Amazon hub or something like that, where it would be more feasible (but still difficult to achieve).