Google’s self-driving cars are crossing the Atlantic. According to reports from the Guardian, transport officials in London are in “active discussions” with the Silicon Valley firm to make the British capital one of the trial cities for its autonomous technology. If it happens, London would become the first non-U.S. city (and one of the few, period) to play host to these self-driving cars. And if Google really is planning on world domination, then hopping over the pond seems like a logical move anyway.
The self-driving cars project, which first began back in 2009, has made considerable strides and the vehicles have been tested thus far in the streets of Mountain View, California, Austin, Texas, and soon, Kirkland, Washington. “It’s going to have to work in big cities, so why don’t we start trialling it now?” asked Isabel Dedring, the U.K.’s deputy mayor for transport. “Google have said they are focused on the US, but they’re starting to think about going elsewhere, so we’re in active discussions.”
Waymo’s robotaxis are rolling into another U.S. city
Waymo has been testing its driverless cars in Miami intermittently for the last five years, but now it’s making serious moves to launch a robotaxi service there.
The Alphabet-owned company revealed on Thursday that it’ll start testing its Jaguar I-PACE autonomous cars on the streets of the city early next year, with the aim of launching a robotaxi service for residents and visitors via the Waymo One app in 2026.
Waymo, Nexar present AI-based study to protect ‘vulnerable’ road users
Robotaxi operator Waymo says its partnership with Nexar, a machine-learning tech firm dedicated to improving road safety, has yielded the largest dataset of its kind in the U.S., which will help inform the driving of its own automated vehicles.
As part of its latest research with Nexar, Waymo has reconstructed hundreds of crashes involving what it calls ‘vulnerable road users’ (VRUs), such as pedestrians walking through crosswalks, biyclists in city streets, or high-speed motorcycle riders on highways.
Self-driving cars are coming. It remains to be seen how long that will take. Plenty of vehicles can more or less drive themselves on highways, but for now, they still can't completely reliably drive themselves on all streets, in all conditions, taking into account all different variables. One thing is clear, though: the tech industry sees autonomous driving as the future of personal transportation, and they're spending billions to reach that goal.
But what happens when we get there? Tesla made headlines for not only announcing its new Cybercab fully autonomous vehicle, but simultaneously claiming that customers will be able to buy one. That's right, at least if Tesla is to be believed, the Cybercab doesn't necessarily represent Tesla building its own Uber-killing fleet of self-driving cars, but instead giving people the ownership over the self-driving car industry.