TechCrunch – A self-driving car in Texas hit and killed a mother duck, sparking neighborhood outrage
TechCrunch reports that an AVRide autonomous vehicle drove over and killed a mother duck - and Austinites are rightfully outraged.
Robotaxi.news
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Robotaxi.news
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Scouring the news for interesting articles on robotaxis.
Read MoreTechCrunch – A self-driving car in Texas hit and killed a mother duck, sparking neighborhood outrage
StreetsBlog NYC – With Waymo Testing Halted, We Have A Rare Chance To Get Ahead of the ‘Driverless Revolution’
Sam Schwartz and Kelly McGuinness report in StreetsBlog NYC on how that now Waymo robotaxis are paused that this is an opportune time to look into whether robotaxis are useful in the first place. A key point is that if safety is the goal then clearly public transit should be promoted instead.
SF Examiner – Waymo rolls out new vehicles in San Francisco
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 – Waymo’s Robot Car Testing Ends in NYC After Permits Expire
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 – Robot Taxis Stop in Traffic in Chinese City, Stranding Travelers
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 – Tesla Admits Its Robotaxis Are Sometimes Driven by Remote Humans
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.
