It has become tradition around here that at the end of each year I write down my predictions for the following one. And in 2022, I did that here. The overarching point of writing something like this down publicly is not necessarily to be right… Read More
All posts tagged “autonomous vehicles”
Cruise expands autonomous taxi service in San Francisco
Cruise, which I wrote about earlier this year, has just announced that its autonomous taxi service will soon be available to the general public 24 hours a day, across all of San Francisco. Initially the service was only available between 11PM and 5AM (when traffic… Read More
The Derek Zoolander autonomous vehicle problem
According to McKinsey, something like $100 billion has been invested in trying to get autonomous vehicles to work and yet the industry remains stuck with problems like this one here: State-of-the-art robot cars also struggle with construction, animals, traffic cones, crossing guards, and what the… Read More
Autonomous trucks are coming
I hate driving. So I’m looking forward to the day when autonomous vehicles will be able to take me where I need to go, such as out for a late-night poutine. But as we all know, autonomy has proven to be a trickier problem to… Read More
San Francisco now has autonomous vehicle taxis
These are two short videos of autonomous Cruise vehicles driving around San Francisco. Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, received a permit from the state of California to operate autonomous vehicles — without a safety driver — in September of last year. In November… Read More
The century of gasoline vehicles is coming to an end
Chrysler announced last week that it will become an all-electric vehicle company by 2028. This is a pretty big deal and, as I understand it, a first for the legacy US automakers. At this point, it now feels difficult to argue that this shift isn’t… Read More
Luminar announces vision for autonomous vehicle future
Luminar Technologies, which is an autonomous vehicle technology company that I have written about before, just hosted its first ever “Studio Day” in New York City this week. And at the event they announced two new technologies. The first is called Iris, which is a… Read More
More drivers, more supply
This week, Lyft announced that it is going to be selling its autonomous vehicle division to Toyota for some $550 million. (Apparently $200 million of this will be paid upfront, with the remaining $350 million paid out over a five year period.) This is notable… Read More
The future of self-driving cars (and LIDAR)
Here is an interesting podcast with Austin Russell, who is CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar specializes in LIDAR vision systems for autonomous vehicles and has already cut deals with carmakers such as a Volvo. Starting as early as next year, Volvo hopes to start rolling… Read More
Twelve climate technologies
This is an excellent blog post by entrepreneur and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla about some of the “instigators” that are working to help solve our climate crisis and some of the areas in which we probably should be focusing on next. One of the things… Read More