autonomous vehicles

Einride founder on building an underlying business to support future tech goals • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 20, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, EC AI, EC Founder Interview, EC Mobility Hardware, EC Mobility Software, einride, self driving vehicles, Startups, TransportationNo Comments

Swedish startup Einride was founded in 2016 with a mission to electrify freight transport. Today, that means designing electric trucks and an underlying operating system to help overland shippers make the transition to electric. In the future, it will mean deploying electric autonomous freight — more specifically, Einride’s autonomous pods, which are purpose-built for self-driving and can’t accommodate human drivers. Einride founder and CEO Robert Falck told ZebethMedia a year ago that he felt a moral obligation to create a greener mode of freight transport after spending years building heavy-duty diesel trucks at Volvo GTO Powertrain. On top of that, he saw the need to eventually automate the role of long-haul trucking. Falck, a serial entrepreneur, decided against the route many autonomous trucking companies have taken — doggedly pursuing self-driving technology, even if it meant putting sensors and software stacks on diesel vehicles. Rather, Falck chose a two-step process to bring Einride to market. The first involves working with OEM partners to build electric trucks and partnering with shippers to deploy them and earn revenue. That revenue then goes back into the business for the second step, which is the development of an autonomous system. By the time Einride is ready to go to market with its autonomous pods, it will ideally already have a range of commercial shipping partners in its pipeline. Einride’s current shipping clients across Sweden and the U.S. include Oatly, Bridgestone, Maersk and Beyond Meat. The company said it clears close to 20,000 shipments per day. Over the past few months, Einride has completed a public road pilot of its electric, autonomous pod in Tennessee with GE Appliances, launched its electric trucks in Germany in partnership with home appliance giant Electrolux, announced plans to build a network of freight charging stations in Sweden and Los Angeles, and introduced its second-generation autonomous pod. We sat down with Falck a year after our initial interview with him to talk about the challenges of reaching autonomy when connectivity on the roads is lacking, why the Big Tech crashes are actually healthy for the industry and what consolidation looks like for autonomous driving. The following interview, part of an ongoing series with founders who are building transportation companies, has been edited for length and clarity.

Cruise has expanded its driverless robotaxi service to daytime hours • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, cruise, robotaxi, San Francisco, TransportationNo Comments

Cruise is expanding its driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco to daytime hours, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt tweeted Wednesday. The robotaxi service is now available to employees from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then again from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eventually, these expanded operating hours will be available to the public. The bolstered hours are the latest expansion of the GM subsidiary’s driverless operations in San Francisco. Cruise opened its driverless robotaxi service, in which there is not a human safety operator, to the public in early 2022. Initially, the rides were free, limited to small portions of the city and only offered between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. That service has expanded over time. Cruise began charging for rides in June 2022. Today, public customers can hail (and are charged for) driverless rides between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. About 70 Cruise AVs are operating in the service. Cruise has about 300 AVs across its operations in San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix. Fares include a base fee of $5 and a $0.90 per mile and $0.40 per-minute rate. A 1.5% city tax is also included in the price. An estimated fare is calculated using the estimated time and distance of the fastest, most optimal route. Cruise shares that estimate fare with customers and will charge that amount if the time or distance of the actual ride takes longer. Cruise doesn’t have surge pricing. Image Credits: Cruise Earlier this month, Cruise expanded its service area to most of San Francisco. For now, that expanded area is only available to employees. Cruise is also expanding operations to Austin and Phoenix. In October, the company invited potential passengers in Phoenix and Austin to join the waitlist to be among the first robotaxi passengers. During GM’s third-quarter earnings call, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company remains on track to complete its first commercial driverless public rides and deliveries by the end of the year. Cruise will likely follow a similar playbook in Austin and Phoenix as it has in San Francisco, albeit at a faster pace considering both locations are in states with fewer regulatory hurdles than California. In San Francisco, Cruise typically starts with its own employees and then opens it up to the public. The service area and hours also start small and grow, each time being first offered to employees.

TuSimple co-founders clapback, consolidation continues and Waymo reaches two milestones • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, The Station, Transportation, TuSimpleNo Comments

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe for free. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. This coming week I will be heading to Los Angeles to check out the LA Auto Show as well as a few EV and AV related events. Maybe I’ll see some of you there! Let’s get right to it. Got a news tip or inside information about a topic we covered? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. Or you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps. Micromobbin’ Taur, a scooter company we wrote about in February, has launched its virtual showroom, a very cool interactive website that allows prospective scooter buyers to virtually test out different aspects of the scooter, from how to set up the foot platforms and activate the throttle to how to turn on the lights and charge the battery. I recently got the opportunity to try out one of Taur’s front-facing scooters, and I’ll admit it’s a very cool ride. The scooter doesn’t have a traditional board for your feet to balance on, but rather has a foot deck that lets riders face forward while riding. I found that this gave me greater visibility of my peripherals — having my left foot in front of my right on a traditional kick scooter meant I could see to my right quite well, but had less range of motion to look over my left shoulder. Whereas, facing forward on a Taur scooter meant I had equal range of motion to look over each shoulder. Perhaps the most interesting part of the ride was that it didn’t even feel like I was riding a scooter. It almost felt like I was riding a moped or a bike (maybe something to do with being front facing?) I kept mistakenly calling it “a great bike” — a term co-founder Carson Brown and head of marketing Ed Turner said they were also hearing from others. It might be more accurate to say that the movement of riding Taur’s scooter was similar to the movement of skiing, where you turn by pushing your weight off each foot, rather than by angling the handlebars. This gave me a better feeling of control and a sense that I could do some serious shredding on this thing. The fat tires certainly made for a bouncy experience. I rode the scooter over uneven roads in a parking lot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and once I got used to the jostling, I felt safe enough to brave the meanest of potholes. Taur is focusing on launching in Los Angeles this year and will be running pop ups there over the next few months. The startup has almost 1,000 units to ship to LA this year to fulfill pre-orders and general sales. In other news … Amazon and other retailers are facing criticism for selling devices that allow e-bikes to be upgraded to illegal speeds for as little as $100. Bird is apparently launching in Qatar, which is weird because the company recently said it was exiting several dozen cities around the world, including in the Middle East. Honda is developing and testing a range of micromobility vehicles equipped with “cooperative intelligence,” a technology that combines cameras, voice recognition, AI and standard controls to enable more “human-like” cooperation between people and the vehicles. The vehicles would be able to generate a 3D map of their surroundings in real time. Revel is taking its e-mopeds out of Washington D.C. The company said it wanted to focus its attention on growing out its electric ridehail and EV charging businesses. You’re reading an abbreviated version of Micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Deal of the week The wave of consolidation that has affected the autonomous vehicle industry has extended to lidar companies as well. For example, take this week’s merger of Ouster and Velodyne — two lidar companies that separately went public via special purpose acquisition companies. Under this all-stock transaction, both Ouster and Velodyne will maintain a 50% stake in the new company. Why are lidar companies sucked up into this wave of consolidation? Too many lidar companies are competing for a sliver of business from OEMs. (That whole supply-demand problem). Scaling up is also an expensive endeavor. Velodyne and Ouster have each snapped up lidar companies prior to this merger. Velodyne acquired in 2022 Bluecity.ai, and last year, Ouster bought lidar startup Sense Photonics. What lidar company is next? Other deals that got my attention this week … Acerta Analytics, an advanced analytics company that helps automakers and suppliers improve quality in manufacturing processes and support early defect detection, raised $10.4 million CAD. The Series B round was led by BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation and Thrive Venture Funds with participation from existing investors OMERS Ventures and StandUp Ventures. Elon Musk nearly $4 billion worth of Tesla shares. Foxconn increased its investment in EV startup Lordstown Motors by buying $170 million in common stock and newly created preferred shares. Once the deal is complete, Foxconn will hold all of Lordstown’s outstanding preferred stock and 18.3% of its common stock on a pro forma basis. Foxconn will also have the right to two board seats. Kyte, the rental car delivery startup founded in 2019, raised $60 million in Series B round led by InterAlpen Partners, whose founder, Stephen George is joining Kyte’s Board. Other new investors include Valor Equity Partners, Anthemis, Citi Ventures, and Hearst

Now anyone can hail a Waymo robotaxi in downtown Phoenix • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, robotaxi, Transportation, waymoNo Comments

Waymo has opened up its fully driverless ride-hail service in downtown Phoenix to members of the general public. Previously, the company had only been operating a commercial service with no safety driver behind the wheel for participants in its “trusted tester” program. The expansion in Phoenix is yet another sign of Waymo’s accelerated push towards commercialization. It comes a day after Waymo secured its driverless deployment permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which allows Waymo to charge for autonomous services, like delivery, in San Francisco. More importantly, it’s a prerequisite to securing the California Public Utilities Commission’s own driverless deployment permit, which Waymo needs to operate a commercial robotaxi service with no human safety operator in the city. Waymo’s service in downtown Phoenix will mirror the one it has operated in Chandler, Arizona since 2020. It will be a paid rider-only service that’s available 24/7 to anyone who downloads the app and hails a ride Waymo’s service area. Waymo said this is an important step as it plans to expand the service to even more of the downtown area in coming months. Earlier this month, Waymo also launched rides, with a driver in the front seat, to Phoenix’s airport from the city’s downtown. The service is currently only available to trusted testers, but will likely expand using the same recipe Waymo has used throughout its many expansions — Waymo will probably next test fully driverless rides to the airport with employees before opening that up to trusted testers, and then finally to members of the public. Waymo did not confirm or deny this roadmap. Waymo’s service area in downtown Phoenix. Image Credits: Waymo Waymo did not say how many of its fleet of Jaguar I-Pace’s would be dedicated to the commercial ramp in Phoenix, but a spokesperson told ZebethMedia the company is ready to meet what it projects to be a “healthy demand” for a 24/7 autonomous ride-hailing service downtown.

Waymo can now charge for fully driverless services in San Francisco • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, robotaxi, Transportation, waymoNo Comments

The California Department of Motor Vehicles approved an amendment to Waymo’s existing deployment permit Wednesday to include driverless, as well as drivered, operations. Now, Waymo will be able to charge for usage of its autonomous vehicles, which will operate without anyone in the driver’s seat, for services like food and grocery delivery. The upgraded DMV permit is a prerequisite to launching a fully autonomous commercial ride-hail service in San Francisco, as its main competitor Cruise did this summer. All Waymo needs now is a driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to finally start charging for rider-only autonomous rides in the city. The company will be eligible to apply for that permit once it has operated its driverless cars on public roads for at least 30 days. Waymo has been operating with its drivered deployment permit from the DMV since last October, which allowed the company to begin a commercial autonomous delivery pilot in San Francisco with Albertsons earlier this year. Per the permit’s requirements, a human safety operator has to be in the front seat during operations. Waymo’s service area in San Francisco. Image Credit: Waymo Waymo then received a CPUC drivered deployment permit in February this year and began charging its “trusted testers” for robotaxi rides with a human safety operator in the front seat in May. Between June and August, Waymo completed more than 709,000 miles with a safety driver in the state of California, according to the CPUC’s quarterly report. The company recently expanded its service in downtown Phoenix to include trips, with a human safety operator, to Phoenix’s airport, and said it would launch a robotaxi service in Los Angeles.

Lyft takes $135.7 million hit on Argo AI shutdown • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in Argo AI, autonomous vehicles, Lyft, ridehailing, TransportationNo Comments

Ride-hailing company Lyft lost $135.7 million in the third quarter due to the shutdown of autonomous vehicle company Argo AI, in which Lyft had a small stake. Late last month, Argo AI closed its doors as its main backers, Ford and Volkswagen, pulled their investments in order to focus on more near-term goals like advanced driver assistance systems in passenger vehicles. Lyft and Argo were working together to test autonomous ride-hailing using Argo’s tech on the Lyft platform. The two companies had launched public robotaxi services in Austin, Texas in September and Miami, Florida in December of last year. Both of those services have now been discontinued, a Lyft spokesperson told ZebethMedia. Lyft did not say how it will adjust its AV strategy in the future, but the company has also partnered with Motional, another AV tech company, to launch robotaxis in Las Vegas in August. Lyft’s losses incurred by the Argo shutdown only account for about a third of the company’s total losses for the quarter. In Q2, Lyft lost $422.2 million, which is a larger cost than the $99.7 million in the same period of 2021 and a net loss of $377.2 million in the second quarter of this year. A bigger portion of Lyft’s losses are attributable to $224.1 million in stock-based compensation and related payroll expenses, an increase from $179.1 million in the second quarter. The uptick is related to the top-up that Lyft issued to employees when its stock price declined earlier in the year, according to a Lyft spokesperson. Lyft said the increase isn’t yet related to the rounds of layoffs from the company, the first of which occurred in July and the second just last week as Lyft tries to cut down on operating expenses. In regards to that reduction in workforce, Lyft expects to “incur a charge of between $27 million and $32 million” in Q4, as well as “a stock-based compensation charge and corresponding payroll tax expense related to affected team members, as well as restructuring charges related to a decision to exit and sublease, or cease use, of certain facilities,” said Elaine Paul, Lyft’s chief financial officer, during Monday’s earnings call. “However, we aren’t able to estimate these charges at this time because they depend in part on our future stock price.” Paul also said Lyft has been working to reduce stock-based compensation next quarter by ceasing new hires in the U.S. and shifting the nexus of hiring away from the U.S. and toward international markets like Canada and Eastern Europe where “there’s a different compensation model with low or no equity.” Lyft misses Q3 estimates For the third quarter, Lyft reported revenue of $1.05 billion, which is slightly less than Wall Street expectations of $1.06 billion. The company’s earnings per share hit -$1.18 versus the $0.09 that was expected. Even active riders, which saw an improvement quarter over quarter, only topped 20.3 million, and the Street had hoped for 21.1 million. That said, Lyft’s revenue per active rider beat expectations of $49.94 at $51.88. Lyft’s stock, which had started to climb after Uber reported strong earnings last week, fell 14.36% Monday in after-hours trading. The company’s shares have slid 69.29% since the start of the year. Lyft closed the quarter with $143.7 million in cash. Looking forward, Lyft expects revenue to be between $1.145 billion and $1.165 billion in the fourth quarter, with revenue growth reaching between 9% and 11% quarter over quarter and 18% to 20% year over year. Part of that growth will come from increased revenue per rider, which is backed by Lyft’s recent decision to increase service fees for riders. Paul said Lyft intends to cut its operating expenses by roughly $20 million in Q4 versus Q3, which is in part due to the reduction in force. John Zimmer, Lyft’s president, said he was confident that Lyft would be able to achieve its Q4 goals regardless of the macro environment. “We’ve been using internally two main cases. One is the growth case, which assumes market bookings grow in the low to mid 20% year over year, and that the labor market stays as tight as it currently is,” said Zimmer during the Q3 earnings call. “And then, internally what we call a recession case where the market growth slows and we see operating leverage through lower driver engagement and acquisition costs if unemployment rises. So in both cases, we have a very confident path to the billion dollars, and in both cases, we’ll continue to focus our R&D spend on marketplace innovation that helps improve the cost basis of the business.”

Ford, VW seeking buyer for Argo AI’s lidar unit • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Argo AI, autonomous vehicles, Ford, Lidar, Transportation, volkswagenNo Comments

Ford and Volkswagen are trying to squeeze any remaining value out of Argo AI, the autonomous vehicle startup the two automakers invested billons in before abruptly shutting it down last week. One of the primary items on the block: Argo Lidar, an 80-person team and the lidar tech they developed, according to sources familiar with the unwinding of the company. Argo AI was barely a year old when it acquired Princeton, New Jersey-based lidar startup Princeton Lightwave in October 2017. The acquisition, backed by Ford, was hailed years later as helping to provide a key piece of technology in Argo’s full self-driving system. Lidar, the light detection and ranging radar that measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world, is considered by most in the industry a critical sensor required to safely deploy autonomous vehicles at a commercial scale. The team, which is still based in Princeton, developed medium and long-range lidar sensors. Argo has said the long-range lidar has the ability to see 400 meters away with high-resolution photorealistic quality and the ability to detect dark and distant objects with low reflectivity. Back in May 2021, Argo CEO and co-founder Bryan Salesky told ZebethMedia that the lidar sensor was developed to be cost-effective and manufactured at scale, two factors that matter for any company trying to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology. Argo Lidar point cloud. LG Innotek, a South Korean electronics components manufacturer, began manufacturing the lidar units for Argo this year. Sources say there has been interest from companies in other verticals — meaning outside of the AV world — in buying Argo Lidar’s sensors. Whether any of these interested parties will jump at buying the entire lidar team is unclear. Meanwhile, some of Argo’s 2,000 global workforce are getting offers from Ford and VW. Combined the two automakers invested $3.6 billion in Argo — $2 billion in cash and $1.6 billion in value when it took over VW’s Autonomous Intelligent Driving subsidiary and it became its own entity called Argo AI GmbH. VW plans to absorb the Munich-based Argo AI GmbH, an office of more than people, many of them who previously were part of AID, back into the company. VW is also offering jobs to about 100 former Argo employees based in the United States, a move that suggests the automaker is keen to set up some operations stateside. “Several hundred” employees will be offered positions at Ford, according to sources.

XPeng to begin autonomous driving public road tests in Guangzhou • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, robotaxi, Robotics & AI, TransportationNo Comments

XPeng received a permit Monday to begin testing its G9 electric SUV as an autonomous vehicle on public roads in Guangzhou. The company will begin testing a small fleet as soon as possible with a human safety operator in the driver’s seat. This is a milestone for XPeng as it aims to use its vehicles for robotaxi operations in the future. The G9 is the first mass-produced vehicle to qualify for such tests in China, Xpeng claims. The company is pursuing an approach of using EVs off the shelf for dual purposes — autonomous applications and individual sales — to lower the cost of production and make its vehicles more commercially viable. This is especially salient in the wake of Argo AI’s shutdown, with Ford and Volkswagen pulling their investments in the company in order to prioritize nearer term bets like in-house built advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The news follows XPeng’s announcement at its annual 1024 Tech Day that the G9 passed a government-led autonomous driving closed field test, which made it eligible for approval of further testing. Most, if not all, current autonomous vehicle operators rely on existing vehicle models that have been retrofitted with hardware and software suites to drive autonomously. In the U.S., Waymo uses Jaguar I-Paces and Cruise uses Chevrolet Bolts. XPeng’s G9, which was unveiled in September as a passenger vehicle, will be tested for robotaxi applications without any hardware modifications — higher-end versions of the G9 will be built with Nvidia’s Drive Orin chips and rely on 31 sensors, including a front-view camera and dual lidar sensors. That means the vehicle that’s being tested for robotaxi operations is the same vehicle that will be sold to private passengers. The only difference will be in the software. By early next year, G9s purchased by individuals in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai will have the option of downloading XNGP software, which is XPeng’s “full scenario” ADAS that promises to automate highway driving, city driving and parking tasks. The G9s XPeng will use for autonomous vehicle testing will be given an upgrade that allows them to perform Level 4 autonomy. Level 4 autonomy means the vehicle can drive itself without requiring a human safety operator to take over as long as it’s in certain conditions, like a geofenced area or time of day. XPeng will integrate data from both private passenger vehicles and autonomous test vehicles to continue to operate both systems in parallel, a spokesperson said. The company aims to test its vehicle for robotaxi applications over the next two to three years as it develops its next generation vehicle, with the goal of launching that by 2025 as one of the options, according to Xinzhou Wu, XPeng’s VP of autonomous driving. “Hopefully the software will be in good shape by then so we can at least see a limited scenario similar to what Cruise is doing now,” Wu told ZebethMedia. Wu said that while the new vehicle will have a full sensor suite, it probably won’t come in the form of a purpose-built AV — XPeng for now is sticking with a strategy of using the same mass-produced vehicle for passenger vehicle sales as it does for robotaxi operations. XPeng also doesn’t intend to run its own robotaxi operation in the future. The company envisions itself as more of a provider of the software, and possibly the hardware, stack for other ride-hail focused companies.

Cruise opens robotaxi waitlist in Austin and Phoenix • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, cruise, TransportationNo Comments

Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary, is now inviting potential passengers in Phoenix and Austin to join the waitlist to be among the first Cruise robotaxi passengers. The company has been operating a fully driverless commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco since June, with fully driverless meaning there’s no human safety operator behind the wheel. Last month, Cruise announced plans to add Austin, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona to its resume. During GM’s third quarter earnings call, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company remains on track to complete its first commercial driverless public rides and deliveries by the end of the year. When Cruise initially launched its waitlist to join the “Cruise Rider Community” in San Francisco earlier this year, it promised rides would be free at first. In the past, the company said initial rides in Austin and Phoenix may be free with the intent to begin charging for the service shortly after, but a spokesperson told ZebethMedia today that Cruise will launch a fully driverless paid service immediately. The company began supervised testing in Austin last month with more than a dozen vehicles, according to Vogt, who noted that Cruise’s mapping systems “work as expected.” Cruise intends to begin at limited scale and ramp up as the company produces more vehicles — specifically, the Cruise Origin, a purpose-built AV that Cruise will rely on for its exponential levels of scale and robotaxi domination across the U.S. Interestingly, as part of the waitlist questionnaire, Cruise asks what time of day riders would most likely use the service: morning, afternoon, night and late night. In San Francisco, Cruise only operates from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in San Francisco, largely due to California’s regulations. Cruise’s main competitor Waymo, which has been providing a commercial robotaxi service outside of Phoenix since 2020, operates 24/7, according to the company’s FAQs. So it follows that Cruise may not have to remain a vehicle of the night when it goes to Arizona, at least. Cruise said it would share more updates on the times of day it will run its service in the near future.

It’s time to admit self-driving cars aren’t going to happen • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, TransportationNo Comments

A couple caveats for those going apoplectic over the headline: I mean self-driving isn’t going to be a thing A) in our lifetimes and B) with any kind of omnipresent scale. So in terms of the daily lived experience of most people reading this, truly autonomous vehicles just aren’t going to happen. The evidence pointing to this has been mounting for years now, if not decades, but it’s now tipped the balance to where it’s hard to ignore for a reasoned observer – even one like myself who has previously been very optimistic about self-driving prospects. My decision to make this call is mostly predicated on one big event from Wednesday: Scooped by our very own Kirsten Korosec, Ford announced that it would be winding down Argo AI, the company backed by itself and fellow automaker Volkswagen focused on developing full level 4 autonomous driving technologies. Ford explained their justification in doing so when they released their Q3 earnings a few hours later, noting that not only were they shutting down Argo, but they were also essentially deprioritizing L4 technologies altogether, to instead focus on advanced driver assistance (ADAS) systems with internal resources. Ford CEO Jim Farley justified this by saying that “profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology for ourselves” on the company’s earnings call Wednesday evening. The sentiments echoed those of a much younger and more tech-forward automaker CEO from just last week at our Disrupt conference in San Francisco. While Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe did say the company was eventually aiming to introduce Level 4 autonomy, he also said that the plan is to focus first on L2 and L3 ADAS, with its existing shipping vehicles capped at L3 given their current hardware limitations. He did say that he believes L4 is actually currently possible for companies with the proper advanced hardware kit on cars – with the caveat that those be geofenced to a specific location. That brings us to the companies who are currently operating driverless vehicles on actual public roads, Waymo and GM’s Cruise. Surely, if two (ostensibly) for-profit companies are already out there doing it, then it’s going to happen, right? The fact is that these existing services are extremely constrained in terms of geography and operating hours (though the latter is arguably a regulatory issue) and that seems unlikely to change at a pace that would make them ubiquitous in any reasonable timeframe. Plus, the existing services face consistent, vocal criticism from residents who have to share the road with them. At least Cruise and Waymo’s vehicles are tuned for extreme caution – possibly to a fault. Tesla on the other hand seems much more intent on hard-charging into a future where its so-called ‘Full Self-Driving’ technology actually lives up to its name, with an expanding pool of beta users employing the tech on public streets and frequent software iterations that on at least one occasion have done more harm than good. Musk is also intent on stripping out as many sensors as possible from the Tesla autonomy hardware kit, probably in search of margins, under the misguided belief that compute, AI and optical input will improve and combine to act as a cure-all. Musk strives to justify Tesla’s approach on the regular, but it looks like he may have to do that explaining in more granular detail to the U.S. Department of Justice if they proceed with any action resulting from an ongoing criminal investigation the government branch is pursuing. With even early pioneers striking a skeptical note, the time to consider the opportunity costs of shovelling money into the autonomy engine on autopilot is now. Argo AI was considered a leader with solid technological fundamentals by most experts in the field, so its shuttering is a strong signal not to be ignored. Meanwhile, I barely even scratched the surface on regulatory and public acceptance of any true ubiquitous self-driving, which will necessarily lag technological development — and likely by a lot, not a little.