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The layoffs, which mostly hit commercial operations and related corporate functions, comes one day after the robotaxi subsidiary dismissed nine “key leaders.” The moves are fallout from the company’s response to the Oct. 2 incident in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving car after being hit by another vehicle. Since the incident, the company has suspended all trips on public roads and halted production of a new robotaxi, among other moves. ... General Motors’ Cruise on Thursday announced internally that it will lay off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce ... The layoffs, which...

General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary, Cruise, has announced the layoff of 24 percent of its workforce as part of a strategic restructuring focused on a single market for its disastrous robotaxis. UPI reports that Cruise, the robotaxi startup owned by General Motors, has revealed significant staff reductions in a recent blog post. Thursday’s announcement details the layoff of 24 percent of its full-time employees. This decision, according to the company, is due to a strategic shift to simplify and concentrate its efforts. The focus now is to launch an exceptional service in one city initially, using the Bolt platform as...

One ploughed headfirst into the back of a packed city bus. Another ignored yellow police warning tape and became tangled in downed power lines. Yet another 'out-of-control' vehicle moved menacingly towards a police officer while ignoring his frantic command for it to 'stay!'. Welcome to the streets of San Francisco, where the world's biggest experiment in self-driving 'robotaxis' is under way. While Big Tech says this is the future – a world where artificial intelligence (AI) avoids accidents caused by human error – the reality uncovered by The Mail on Sunday offers a glimpse into a future where AI-controlled vehicles...

In 2017, automakers were scrambling to develop cars that could drive themselves. Ford Motor bet a billion dollars on a startup called Argo AI to catch up to flashy tech companies like Google, Uber and Tesla. Volkswagen, the second-largest automaker in the world, signed on as a backer in 2019, investing $2.6 billion Argo AI at a valuation of more than $7 billion. By 2021, Argo AI was valued at $12.4 billion and counted 2,000 employees, with offices on two continents and self-driving tests underway in seven cities. There were plans to bring a self-driving taxi service to market by...

The aftermath of the pandemic-era tech boom has taken another San Francisco victim. Autonomous trucking software company Embark Trucks is laying off 230 workers and moving toward a total shutdown, the firm announced Friday, less than 16 months after it went public at a $5.2 billion valuation. Friday’s layoff round represented about 70% of the company, according to an email to employees from CEO Alex Rodrigues. Workers will receive severance pay through June 2, health benefits through the end of August and help figuring out visas, if needed, Rodrigues said. Embark is also shuttering offices in southern California and Houston....

You may soon be getting your groceries delivered to you by a car with no driver. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) just approved an exemption for the autonomous vehicle startup Nuro to deploy 5,000 driverless electric delivery vehicles. The exemption is for Nuro's R2 delivery vehicle, which is the company's second-generation self-driving vehicle. It is designed only to carry packages, so there won't be any passengers inside. Nuro wrote in a blog post that the company is excited about this development. "We custom-designed R2 to enrich local commerce with last-mile delivery of consumer products, groceries, and hot food...

Nobody is quite sure if, or when, self-driving cars will become fully mainstream. But an experiment run by Lyft with the technology appears to have been an unadulterated success. The ride-hailing service partnered with an automotive technology company called Aptiv back in 2018 to offer self-driving car rides in Las Vegas, and the companies have just announced that they've now served 100,000 customers. In a blog post, Aptiv President Karl Iagnemma writes that people were overwhelming satisfied with their experiences in the self-driving cars. "Notably, 98% of these paying passengers have rated their Aptiv self-driving rides 5-out-of-5 stars, with most...

A self-driving Uber car that struck and killed an Arizona woman was not able to recognize that pedestrians jaywalk, the National Traffic Safety Board revealed in documents released earlier this week. Elaine Herzberg, 49, died after she was hit in March 2018 by a Volvo SUV, which had an operator in the driver's seat and was traveling at about 40 miles per hour in autonomous mode at night in Tempe. The fatal accident came as a result of this automated Uber not having "the capability to classify an object as a pedestrian unless that object was near a crosswalk," one...

German motorhome manufacturer Hymer introduced a concept named Galileo that argues autonomous technology will make motels obsolete in a distant future. The boxy, glass-walled design study drives itself so its occupants can enjoy the view without needing to keep an eye on the road ahead, and get a full night's sleep without stopping when they're ready to call it a day. From the outside, Hymer's Galileo looks a lot like the dozens of box-shaped concept shuttles we've seen at major auto and tech shows in recent years. It has the proportions of a toaster oven, sliding side doors, and wheels...

The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday started a two-week test transporting mail across three Southwestern states using self-driving trucks, a step forward in the effort to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology for hauling freight. San Diego-based startup TuSimple said its self-driving trucks will begin hauling mail between USPS facilities in Phoenix and Dallas to see how the nascent technology might improve delivery times and costs. A safety driver will sit behind the wheel to intervene if necessary and an engineer will ride in the passenger seat.

“We’ve tailored our partnerships to meet the top rider needs; in fact, the partnerships below represent eight of the top ten activities our riders do when they get in a Waymo,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the partnerships. Here are the company specific rides Waymo will be providing customers: Walmart: Customers will be offered savings to place orders for groceries on Walmart.com. As the orders are being prepared at a local store in the Phoenix area, Waymo vehicles will transport customers to and from Walmart to pick up their groceries. AutoNation: As customers are having vehicles serviced...

Self-driving car passenger slapped with ticket in San Francisco, police say A ticket was issued to a person traveling in a self-driving car in San Francisco on Monday, police told Fox News. The vehicle allegedly did not stop for a person in the crosswalk. However, Cruise, the car company involved, according to KPIX, maintained that the vehicle was in compliance with California state law. A mottorcycle officer issued the ticket after seeing the car not stop for a woman going through a crosswalk in the South of Market area, San Francisco Police Department spokeswoman Officer Giselle Linnane told Fox News...

Now that an Arizona woman was killed after being struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle many questions come to mind not that they shouldn’t.We live in Pittsburgh, lots of hills, and lots of snow and ice.There are times when we have difficulty controlling a car in those conditions (our weather forecast is for 6 inches of snow later today and tonight). A couple months ago my wife, after driving to and from work in terrible road conditions, wondered how a self-driving car would handle it. What do you think of these self-driving cars navigating snow and ice?

Today, GM unveiled the first image of its upcoming autonomous fourth-generation Bolt EV-based vehicle – the “first without a steering wheel or pedal.” The automaker also says that it filed a petition asking the DOT permission to deploy the vehicle as soon as next year. The move represents an accelerated self-driving timeline for the company, which could potentially leapfrog most other companies working on the technology since the most common timeline is a commercial launch in 2020-2022. The vehicle would represent the next generation of Cruise AV autonomous car based on the Bolt EV. In June, GM announced the completion...

A driverless shuttle in Las Vegas crashed Wednesday after it was launched only hours earlier. The shuttle crashed just before noon not far from the Las Vegas Strip, less than two hours after officials held an unveiling ceremony to promote the vehicle. Dozens of people had lined up to board the shuttle, but no one was injured in the accident, which saw the bus collide with a semi-truck, KSNV reported.

Waymo recently hosted a number of journalists at its private Castle testing compound, and treated us to rides with no safety driver behind the wheel – now, the former Google self-driving car company is going farther still, however, launching public road tests of its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans with no safety driver on board. The tests aren’t limited to one or two routes, either; the test area where the truly driverless trials are being conducted is in Chandler, Arizona (part of the greater Phoenix metro area), and the cars are able to go anywhere within this defined space. It’s hard...

A self-driving car is not a self-driving car is not a self-driving car. That is the message Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, tried to send on Monday, when it invited a group of reporters to visit Castle, a facility in California’s Central Valley that it has been using as a training course for its self-driving vehicles. Castle, which is built on a decommissioned Air Force base roughly 120 miles from San Francisco, resembles a miniature city, with many of the realistic elements a self-driving car might encounter on the road — like cul-de-sacs, traffic signals...

Lyft is betting the future of the road centers on sharing autonomous vehicles. It aims to be at the forefront of that technology with a new self-driving division and a self-driving system car manufacturers could plug into their self-driving cars. The company expects to hire “hundreds” of people for the new division by the end of next year and has just signed a lease for 50,000-square-feet on the first floor of a Palo Alto facility where it plans to build out several labs and open testing spaces. The building Lyft refers to as “Level 5” will be developing its new...

One of the biggest gold rushes of our time looks to be the anticipated market for autonomous (self-driving) vehicles. Worldwide there are companies and investors throwing billions at the market and what was predicted to happen in 10 years now looks like 2 at most. The ways autonomous vehicles will impact our daily lives are just now being contemplated but one impact is clear, they have the ability to completely change how we view public transportation, all for the better. We need to rid ourselves of a bus and rail-based paradigm for public transportation. A complete stop should be placed...

TOLEDO (13abc Action News) - Self-driving cars are getting closer to becoming a reality in America. Testing is underway in a few places around the country and if you travel the Ohio Turnpike, you'll soon be sharing the road with them. We spoke with drivers and the head of the Ohio Turnpike Commission about the testing. The autonomous vehicles could be on the turnpike by the end of the year. The Ohio Turnpike will be turned into a test track of sorts for the emerging technology. Randy Cole is the Executive Director of the Turnpike Commission, "It's 241 miles of...