It’s paywalled.
Really weird, it’s not for me. Sorry about that.
archive.is is your friend.
Not paywalled for me.
But it does say you’ve gotta disable your adblocker. Unless you click the little link at the bottom of the popup that says “continue reading anyhow”
On my phone there was a page with subscription options, nothing about ad blocking or continuing to the story.
On trying again on my PC/tablet to access the same link as I read last time I now get the subscription options page which is probably the same one you get.
Which suggests to me that maybe you had visited the Austin Statesman on your phone in the past and used up your “free bite”, whereas I had not. I clear all my cookies a lot, which defeats an ever-decreasing fraction of these kinds of “one or two free bites” metering schemes.
The article really was mostly fluff. They’ve been driving a growing fleet of autonomous trucks with safety drivers for 4 years. On two point-to-point routes between freight docks separated by a couple hundred miles of interstate. They’re about to try their first run with no driver. The rest is blah blah.
I figured that was the actual story, and pretty much lost interest when I hit the paywall. Thanks for the summary.
A friend of mine just spent the weekend in San Francisco. They had a self driving cab. He sent a video. It stopped at lights and stopped for people crossing the street. I’ll post the vid if someone points out how.
That was a Waymo. They have had them in SF for a couple of years. They are in parts of LA now too and I’m sure other cities. They have to stay in a relative small area and don’t go on highways.
Apparently they get stuck on occasion and apparently it notifies a room full of people in India for on of them to get it free.
Tesla is working on a competing product supposedly to be released in mid 2026.
Heh, I can’t really tell if this is going to slow down the arrival of self-driving cars or just get us less capable self-driving cars quicker.
Still, it’s amazing and does dispute the OP.
A Waymo did just get stuck in a Chick-fil-A drivethrough. Not a big deal, but amusing.
Waymo gets stuck in California Chick-fil-A drive-thru | KTLA
Only in the tiny area they operate, which is quite limited.
Agree that it’s amazing but not that it disputes the OP. Right now they only work in a smallish city area. Totally autonomous would be able to go from a curbside stop in San Francisco to an address in Los Angeles.
Waymos are very close to perfect in their small area. Telas do reasonably on any city street and highway but not nearly well enough to not have an aware driver paying attention.
Mid 2025. I.e., just a couple of months from now.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a63632919/tesla-robotaxi-paid-service-start-austin-texas/
Elon time and all that. And it will undoubtedly be highly geofenced and be Austin-only to start with. Which would still make it mostly comparable with Waymo.
There’s supposedly been a private, employees-only version going for a little while now.
The Cybercabs won’t be until 2026. But they can start the service with Model 3/Y cars. I wonder if they’ll disable the controls.
Phoenix-metro for one.
They’ve been here (in LA) for a while now, too. It’s not just a super recent thing. I see them all the time. But I live nearish to LAX, so it’s a logical place to see them.
A tech investor has written a kids book about autonomous vehicles triumphing over evil human-driven cars.
I would buy a t-shirt with the laser-shooting, fire-farting monster truck “Destructo”.
This children’s book is all about autonomous vehicles triumphing over evil human drivers
I tried them in SF and LA a couple of weeks ago when I was in California. I was impressed: I was wondering if they’d be timid and conservative but they drove at a completely reasonable level of competence and aggression: about what I’d expect from a good, confident and conscientious driver. They drove at reasonable “matching traffic” speed, handled weird situations well (e.g. “coordinating” with opposing drivers about getting round someone who double parked, etc.).
It made me doubt my priors: I was previously quite sympathetic to the idea that full self driving was a long way aways, but the proficiency of city driving I saw was quite good. It’s unclear to me what the distance is between this and more suburban or rural driving would be. Like there was a lot going on, especially around the Hollywood area, and the car’s behavior was ideal and very natural.
Waymo and Toyota announced a new partnership today:
Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies. Woven by Toyota will also join the potential collaboration as Toyota’s strategic enabler, contributing its strengths in advanced software and mobility innovation. This potential partnership is built on a shared vision of improving road safety and delivering increased mobility for all.
Toyota and Waymo aim to combine their respective strengths to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform. In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo’s autonomous technology and Toyota’s vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs). The scope of the collaboration will continue to evolve through ongoing discussions.
So apparently Toyota will build the platform, which will be deployed in Waymo’s autonomous vehicle fleet and they are also going to explore how they can leverage Waymo’s technology for Toyota’s cars.