Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
SF Examiner reports on the new Zeekr vehicles that Waymo wants to use. Though since there is currently a 100% tariff on importing Chinese vehicles into the US, these vehicles are likely to not be a widespread solution due to their cost.
The City reports that Waymo's permits to test some of their robotaxis in New York City has ended. And their permission to run vehicles in the state of New York has reached a dead end. NYC is simply not read for robotaxis, given they have far more cars there than is useful. It appears Waymo never expected to hit such a speed bump in their deployment.
NY Times reports on how Baidu had a major outage in Wuhan, stranding passengers in the middle of busy streets and even causing at least one collision. In fact, robotaxis from China have had a very questionable safety record.
Wired reports that Tesla acknowledges that their "robotaxis" are sometimes actually driven by humans. This is of course not a surprise given the Tesla Optimus robots are known to actually be just teleoperated puppets. Certainly is peculiar that the company is valued at $1.4T based on robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Waymo completely blocks a major transit line during rush hour
Benzinga reports that the California Public Utilities Commission has declared that Tesla does not have true autonomous capability and therefore does not have an actual robotaxi system. Whoops. You can always count on Elon to not speak the truth.
