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Today is Juneteenth, an American federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.
About 10 years ago there was a lot of talk about who won the self-driving car race. One of the problems with that debate—besides assuming there would be only one winner—was that no one had a reliable way to measure it. This was an early era filled with lots of demos and capital, but little substance – at least what the public and people like myself had access to.
Consulting and research start-up Automatic AI has developed a generative AI platform to create a benchmarking system that evaluates and ranks autonomous vehicle companies in an attempt to answer this question in real time. And this week, the startup released its Road to Autonomy Index, which searches relevant global public databases, including federal and state reports, SEC filings, public exchanges and other data. The system weighs the company’s operations, scale, revenue, commercial partnerships, production and safety record based on this data and provides an update every 12 hours. There are four indexes that rank robot taxis, autonomous driving license companies, autonomous trucks and delivery bots.
An important note, according to Autnmy AI co-founder Rob Grant, the AI ​​platform doesn’t just scrape information from the internet. “We agreed early on that we don’t scrape information,” he said. “If it’s in the public domain or if it’s available under a Creative Commons license, we’ll use that information. We have some license data that we pay people for, and also under that agreement.”
The indices have a global approach, which produces some interesting results. One of the first things that impressed Grant was China’s stronger ranking across several categories.
As of Friday, the robotaxi leader was not Waymo. It was China’s Baidu Apollo Go program – just button. Waymo was in the secondary position, followed by Chinese companies Pony.ai and WeRide. Tesla was in fifth place.
A little bird
I was recently reminded by a little bird to keep an eye on Texas’ automated vehicle tracker tool that launched in May. And I’m glad they did; looks like Tesla, Waymoand Zoox are building their respective fleets in the state. Reminder: This does not mean that all of these are used commercially. Zoox, for example, cannot operate commercially until it receives an exemption from the federal government. It currently has the ability to drive its custom-built robot taxi, but cannot charge customers.
As of May 28, Waymo had 577 autonomous vehicles registered in the state. It now has 620 of them, about a 7.5% increase in less than a month. Tesla now has 69 registered autonomous vehicles, a 64% increase from the 42 it had on May 28. Zoox, which had 35 registered autonomous vehicles last month, now has 43.
Unride, Nuroand the Volkswagen subsidiary MOIA holding on to 317, 47 and 12 respectively.
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Cargofya logistics company that uses artificial intelligence to automate freight operations, raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by u.ventures, Toloka and Movens Capital. Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, and several angel investors also participated.
Carthe Singapore-based online car marketplace, bought Australian used car platform CarPlace, Reuters reported. The terms were not disclosed.
Gatik, a startup that has developed self-driving trucks for short distances announced a multi-year collaboration with PepsiCo. The companies would not share the value of that deal, but it signals PepsiCo’s commitment to Gatik, which already operates driverless trucks for the food and beverage giant across Arkansas, Arizona and Texas.
QuantumScape announced a joint research agreement with Honda R&D Co. to accelerate the development of solid-state batteries and associated manufacturing processes.
Car manufacturer Stellantisself-propelled startup Waveand ride-hailing giant Uber entered into an agreement to jointly develop and implement driverless robot axis.
XDOFa startup focused on robot training data, raised $70 million from Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, a16z, Lux and WndrCo.
Notable reads and other goodies
A video posted on Reddit showed a driver running a stop sign and hitting a self-driving vehicle in Dallas. TechCrunch confirmed that it was a Avride robot taxiwhich was hailed via the Uber app. An Avride spokesman said no injuries were reported and that data from the incident is being reviewed “to continually refine our technology and processes as part of our standard operating procedures.” Asked about the reaction of the self-driving system and the human safety operator behind the wheel, Avride said: “Our safety review is currently ongoing, so we cannot provide more precise details at this time.”
Tesla owners in China have discovered a solution to the vehicle’s distracted driving monitor: tiny plastic heads.
On top of the X, people saw a Tesla with an authorized limousine permit sticker for San Francisco County and San Francisco International Airport. A spokesperson for SFO told TechCrunch that “Tesla has been issued a limousine permit to operate at SFO. This is for traditional limousine operations, meaning the vehicles have a human driver. Tesla has not been issued a permit for any autonomous operations at SFO.”
Mobileyewhich has established itself as a supplier of autonomous vehicle technologies is now taking steps to become a robotaxi operator. The company plans to launch a robotaxi service in an unnamed US city in 2027. History lesson: Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua told me back in 2020 that to crack the holy grail of passenger car autonomy, you had to first pursue the robotaxi.
Uber plans to launch a premium robotaxi service in Houston in mid-2027, making it the second US market under its partnership with the EV maker Sure and startup of autonomous vehicles Nuro.
Waymo recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 robotic axles to prevent them from entering freeway construction zones. Waymo took its robot axis off the highways weeks ago and has identified at least 13 instances of its robot axis driving into highway sections that were closed for construction. Here’s a detail worth noting: The software fix is ​​”under development,” meaning this issue isn’t fixed.
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