In Los Angeles, self-driving vehicles were once a cause for rubber-necking as their vacant front seats and rapidly rotating cameras caused stirs of commotion and curiosity. Since settling comfortably into the flow of LA traffic, Waymos have become quite a normality in this city, and no one seems to bat an eye anymore. Behind the scenes, however, Waymo has been working on improving their vehicles, considering comfort, safety and aesthetics in crafting their new automotive experience. Perhaps you’ve caught a glimpse of their sleek new design, marked by a powder blue exterior and elongated build that has just begun to hit the streets in select cities. It’s called the Ojai, and is described as “an oasis on wheels,” per Waymo’s official website. The company has begun servicing rides to select customers free of charge, as they use the trials to receive feedback and make adjustments before officially releasing their new product to the public. In an attempt to lower the cost of robotaxis, this new model has cut sensor costs and implemented smarter AI technology, ultimately attempting to do more with less. Waymo is striving to build its empire, aiming to enter more than 20 cities and more than double weekly paid rides by the end of the year. With a vehicle focused on creating the most seamless rider experience at a lower cost to build, the Ojai is part of Waymo’s process in reaching their goals. Building on the foundation of over 20 million fully autonomous trips across 11+ cities, The Ojai is the first vehicle to feature the 6th-generation Waymo Driver. This system is a result of seven years of safety-proven service and is engineered with a simplified, cost-effective design that delivers more capabilities. At the forefront of their advancements, the 6th-generation Waymo driver will allow their new
May 28, 2026 · via lamag.com
Waymo Says Its Next-Gen Ojai Robotaxis Are Ready For Prime Time You'll soon be able to hitch a ride in the high-tech Zeekr vans, which Waymo is using to expand its robotaxi fleet. - Waymo's new Ojai robotaxis will soon be available for public rides in three U.S. cities. - The vans are made by Chinese carmaker Zeekr and retrofitted with Waymo's proprietary hardware and software. - The company says they will more accessible, roomier, and more high-tech. Waymo announced Thursday that it is officially introducing its next-generation Ojai robotaxi to the public. The large, light blue electric vans will launch soon in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix as part of a free initial program before paid rides begin. While the current Jaguar I-Pace crossovers will continue to be in service, the Ojai should offer an improved ride experience and better performance in tricky weather, according to the company. Waymo said the Ojai has a low step and a flat floor, with elevator-style sliding doors for easy ingress and egress. It also has a roomy cabin with large windows enabling expansive outside views. Gallery: Waymo Zeekr Robotaxi It will have three screens inside, one at the front and two at the back allowing riders to customize things like climate and audio. They will also be more accessible, with embedded braille and screen-reader compatibility integrated into the seat handles. The race to deploy autonomous ride-hail vehicles is heating up in the U.S., with several players such as Zoox, Tesla, and Uber gearing up to grow their robotaxi footprint. Waymo’s expansion has been the most successful so far, with its robotaxis now operational in 11 U.S. cities with over half a million paid weekly rides. It plans to expand to 20 more cities in the coming months. However, Waymo’s aggressive expansion
May 28, 2026 · via insideevs.com
Guest commentary: Why trustworthy GNSS positioning is critical for scaling autonomous driving
Md
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Manuel del Castillo
May 28, 2026 02:40 PM EDT
Featured Stories
China’s EV leaders slash earnings as domestic sales plunge, cutthroat market speeds tech race
China's EV giants face a domestic crisis as sales drop 38 percent. BYD and Geely respond with ultrafast-charging batteries and robotaxis while doubling overseas exports to escape the home-market slump.
May 28, 2026 · via europe.autonews.com
AUSTIN, Texas — Starting Thursday, the state of Texas is enforcing registration rules for autonomous vehicles, or AVs.
Companies that use AVs to transport passengers or cargo must now have authorization from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). To get that authorization, companies have to certify that their vehicles comply with state and federal laws, have a recording device, can achieve minimal risk if there is a system family, are properly titled and registered, and have vehicle insurance.
KVUE checked in with the Texas DMV to get a list of companies that have active authorizations. Those companies are:
- MOIA America
- Nuro
- Zoox Inc
- Waymo LLC
- May Mobility Inc
- Gatik AI Inc
- Kodiak Robotics Inc
- Aurora Operations Inc
- Truck Opco LLC (Stack AV)
- Tesla Robotaxi LLC
- Bot Auto TX Inc
- Torc Robotics Inc
Some of the listed companies – including Waymo and Tesla Robotaxi – currently have driverless vehicles operating on the streets of Austin.
May 28, 2026 · via kvue.com
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May 28, 2026 · via youtube.com
China’s BYD aims for zero accidents with ‘God’s Eye’, vows crash cost coverage
EV giant pushes affordable autonomy with its system, aiming to make self-driving safer and accessible to mass-market consumers
“There are roughly 1.19 million people who die in traffic accidents globally every year, and tens of millions more are injured. Our first goal is to achieve zero traffic accidents,” Wang said.
“A car is equipped with more than a dozen cameras, lidar and radar – the equivalent of dozens of eyes – monitoring road conditions around the clock without blind spots. Advanced driver-assistance never gets tired.”
Wang did not disclose a timetable for commercialisation.
The announcement underscores BYD’s push to secure a leading position in the future of mobility, with ambitions to mass-produce smarter cars at lower costs.
Wang said the company had built more than 6,100 flash-charging stations in total, the most among Chinese carmakers.
May 28, 2026 · via scmp.com
Passengers could book taxi and bus-style self-driving vehicles later this year, as applications are now open for operators to run cars across Great Britain. The pilot scheme will enable firms – including Waymo – to bring cutting-edge technology to British roads, with the Government estimating the creation of thousands of jobs and unlocking billions for the economy by 2035. Services could enhance journeys by supporting greater freedom and independence for older and disabled people, as well as expanding travel options across both work and leisure. Self-driving technology could transform roads, with human error currently contributing to 88% of collisions on UK roads. The Government says safety will be central to the pilot scheme, which will gather real-world evidence on how self-driving vehicles operate on everyday roads, from navigating busy urban streets to interacting with traffic and carrying passengers safely. Services will be subject to rigorous approval checks by Government, including strict safety assessments to ensure the technology is protected against cyber and security threats. Simon Lightwood, roads and buses minister, said: “Self-driving vehicles represent a transformative opportunity for Britain, opening up independent travel for disabled people and older adults, while driving growth and creating high-skilled jobs across the UK. “This pilot scheme brings that future closer, giving passengers the opportunity to experience self-driving travel first-hand while ensuring safety always comes first.” Local transport authorities, such as Transport for London, will also need to provide local consent to ensure services reflect local priorities. The Government is working closely with safety and accessibility experts as it develops the regulations needed to safely bring self-driving vehicles to British roads. Learnings from the pilots will support the development of self-driving vehicle regulations, which are currently being progressed by Government, following a call for evidence that closed in March. Ben Loewenstein, Waymo head of policy
May 28, 2026 · via roadsafetygb.org.uk
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will be holding a public meeting on Nov. 10 to gain input on the Department of Transportation’s Federal Automated Vehicles Policy.
The policy was released on Sept. 20 and aims to promote the safe and efficient development and deployment of highly automated vehicles.
The public meeting will be held in Washington, D.C., from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the General Services Administration's Regional Office Building. All comments at the meeting will be given orally and any presentation materail should be submitted to the docket (NHTSA-2016-0090) for inclusion. All attendees must register by Nov. 8. NHTSA also said the meting will be webcast.
If it is too late to register for the Nov. 10 meeting, written statements can be submitted during the comment period. NHTSA said these will be considered with the same weight as oral comments at the public meeting. All written comments must be submitted no later than Nov. 22, 2016.
For more information, click here.
May 28, 2026 · via worktruckonline.com
Traffic & Transit Waymo Robotaxis Yanked From CA Highways As CA Pushes New Legislation Lawmakers say they proposed legislation in "direct response" to issues involving Waymo robotaxis on California streets. SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Waymo has pulled its driverless cars from U.S. freeways after announcing it will pause all freeway service while the robotaxi provider updates its vehicles' software to improve navigation in construction zones. The move affects more than 3,500 Waymo vehicles that drove on freeways in major cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, USA Today reported. It comes after a Waymo was seen fleeing police and speeding through a San Francisco construction zone and after striking a child near a Santa Monica elementary school earlier this year. The Mountain View-based Waymo announced on Friday the temporary end to its freeway service in metro cities "out of an abundance of caution" as storms triggered flooding in Texas and Atlanta where the robotaxis operate. Find out what's happening in Across Californiafor free with the latest updates from Patch. In an email to Patch on Tuesday, a Waymo spokesperson said: "We are committed to being good neighbors for our riders and our communities. As part of that commitment, we make proactive decisions including temporarily pausing aspects of our service. We know riders count on us to get around, and we appreciate their patience as we work to get them where they're going safely and reliably." Find out what's happening in Across Californiafor free with the latest updates from Patch. On May 20, a Waymo vehicle became stuck during heavy showers on a flooded street in Atlanta. No one was inside of the robotaxi, Waymo said in a statement. In California, a more dramatic incident garnered headlines. On May 18, X user Elliot Slade @Elliot_slade posted a video, in which
May 28, 2026 · via patch.com
Sam Schwartz expected Waymo's cars to go the extra mile — or, at least, three-tenths of one. That is roughly how far Schwartz said he was from his hotel in downtown San Francisco when the Waymo taxi he and his wife were riding in suddenly stopped and refused to move. The couple visited the city earlier this month. As Schwartz tried to figure out what was going on in a conversation with Waymo support, the employee on the phone said that there was a "huge blockage" preventing the car from reaching his hotel. Then, the employee told Schwartz: "You can request another ride, probably Uber or Lyft," according to a video Schwartz posted on LinkedIn. "As my son told me, what an advertisement for Uber," Schwartz told Business Insider. A Waymo spokesperson said that the car was halted because of a "restriction placed after our operations team learned of planned protest activity." The spokesperson did not respond when asked what protest was taking place. Waymo suggests other transportation options when cars cannot reach a passenger's destination, the company said. "We're looking into this further to see how we could have better served the rider in this case, in addition to providing a refund," the spokesperson said. Schwartz's experience shows some of the hiccups that Waymo's self-driving vehicles face as they become more common on streets across the US. In at least two incidents this month, Waymo cars drove into floodwaters, prompting the company to issue a software recall and suspend service in six cities, including Atlanta and San Antonio. Separately, the company has halted rides on highways to improve performance around construction zones. Ultimately, Schwartz and his wife chose to walk back to their hotel, though his wife is disabled and has trouble walking long distances. Waymo refunded Schwartz's fare
May 28, 2026 · via businessinsider.com
Waymo begins mapping in Northern Virginia amid autonomous vehicle push VIRGINIA - Driverless car company Waymo has confirmed to FOX 5 D.C. that it is now mapping parts of Northern Virginia. What we know: Waymo said it is conducting the work to prepare for the possibility of the Commonwealth authorizing full autonomous ride-hailing. Autonomous vehicles are not yet authorized to operate on public roads in Virginia without regulatory approval, according to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. What they're saying: A spokesperson emailed FOX 5 D.C. and said trained specialists manually drive mapping vehicles through specific areas as part of the process. Waymo policy adviser Rich Harrington said the company maps communities as part of its deployment process. "The process of getting the vehicles on the road is very costly, so when we come into the community, we map," Harrington said last week during a public meeting with the Virginia Department of Transportation. (Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) Harrington also said Waymo vehicles were already operating on roads in Alexandria with safety drivers behind the wheel and would soon begin operating in Arlington as well. He added that the transition from mapping to launching a fully autonomous ride-hailing service typically takes at least a year and, in his words, requires "a lot of money." Some residents expressed both excitement and concern about the potential expansion into Northern Virginia while speaking with FOX 5. "I would be curious. I’d try it once," Elizabeth Johnson, a commuter in Alexandria, said. Dig deeper: FOX 5 has also learned that state transportation leaders met with Waymo last week to discuss autonomous vehicles in Virginia. What we don't know: Additionally, Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins and Arlington County officials did not respond to FOX 5 D.C.'s requests for comment on the potential
May 28, 2026 · via fox5dc.com
Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said the company’s autonomy efforts now consume most of its research and development budget — an admission that implies over $229 million spent on autonomy alone in the first quarter of 2026. Scaringe made the remarks during a conversation with former Salesforce co-CEO and OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, at CNN’s The 1 on 1 programme. Rivian‘s R&D spending has climbed steadily over the past year, even as the company works to narrow losses across its automotive segment. The EV maker spent $458 million on R&D in the first quarter of 2026, up 20% from $381 million a year earlier. Quarterly R&D ran at $410 million, $453 million and $424 million through the remaining quarters of 2025. Applying Scaringe’s “vast majority” framing — which in financial-disclosure language typically implies at least half — to the Q1 2026 figure points to roughly $229 million or more flowing into autonomy work in a single three-month window. System Reset Taylor opened the exchange with an anecdote about his own bet on autonomy. “I bet my wife in the hospital with our first child that she wouldn’t get her driver’s license because of autonomous driving and on-demand services like Uber and Lyft, and she just got her driver’s license, so I paid her the $10,” he stated. He then questioned Scaringe on how Rivian balances adapting to major technological shifts like generative AI and autonomous driving while still maintaining a steady, long-term strategy. Scaringe’s answer traced an arc that began with Rivian‘s 2021 R1T launch and ended with a full architectural reset of the company’s self-driving stack. “For us, a big focus initially was building out a technology platform and then scaling it. When we launched what we call our Gen 1 vehicles, what we had in terms of
May 28, 2026 · via eletric-vehicles.com
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May 27, 2026 · via youtube.com
Nuro released footage on Wednesday showing one of its robotaxi engineering vehicles driving autonomously through busy intersections in downtown Mountain View, California, offering a fresh look at the urban capability of the system it is developing with Lucid and Uber. The clip, posted to the autonomous vehicle startup’s account on X, pairs live multi-camera street footage with a top-down view of how the vehicle’s AI perceives its surroundings. The simulation layer maps a planned path through intersections and turns, flags surrounding vehicles and pedestrians, and shows the car operating in autonomous mode at speeds between roughly 7 and 28 miles per hour. “Training and testing, all day, every day,” Nuro wrote in the post, adding that it was “getting ready to bring autonomy to everyone.” Below is the video shared by the AV startup. Andrew Macdonald, Uber‘s President and Chief Operating Officer, reacted to the clip by commenting: “Steady progress! 💪 “ The Lucid program is only one of Uber‘s robotaxi bets. The ride-hailing company hosts Waymo vehicles on its app and has struck separate deals with developers including Pony.ai, with its Rivian agreement alone worth up to 1.25 billion dollars for as many as 50,000 R2 robotaxis. Uber‘s total robotaxi commitments now exceed 10 billion dollars across its various partners. The Lucid vehicle runs on Nuro‘s autonomy software, and is destined for exclusive deployment on Uber‘s ride-hailing platform. Nuro’s Own Backyard The footage shows the vehicle threading through dense urban traffic, crosswalks and pedestrians, rather than the controlled proving grounds where the program began. Nuro started the partnership’s closed-course work at its Las Vegas test facility, opened in 2021, before moving to public roads. Autonomous on-road testing has been underway in the San Francisco Bay Area since December, led by Nuro using engineering prototypes supervised by human safety operators.
May 27, 2026 · via eletric-vehicles.com
By Stephen Harber, content strategist, GM talent marketing By Stephen Harber, content strategist, GM talent marketing Validating advanced driver-assistance and automated driving systems at GM scale means testing millions of possible scenarios before a vehicle ever reaches the road. Simulation has become one of the most important tools for making that possible. Aamir Ali is part of the team that helps expand that capability across GMâs AV organization, bringing experience in large-scale software platforms, safety infrastructure, and autonomous vehicle development to one of the most complex validation challenges in the industry. Aliâs path into automated driving wasnât linear. He began his career in India studying mechanical engineering, then moved into infrastructure roles at Google, where he spent more than a decade building internal platforms for products including AdWords and YouTube. Later, he joined Zoom during one of the companyâs fastest growth periods, working on trust and safety systems. Then he entered the autonomous vehicle space at Cruise, where he helped develop simulation environments used to validate self-driving software. During his time there, the team shifted a large portion of testing from physical vehicles to virtual environments, allowing engineers to evaluate more scenarios and iterate faster while continuing to prioritize safety. Now at GM, that experience is being applied at a much larger scale. With a global vehicle portfolio and diverse driving conditions, validating AV and automated driving features requires tools that can handle far more scenarios than road testing alone. Simulation allows engineers to model edge cases, accelerate development cycles, and improve confidence in system performance before vehicles reach the road. See how Aamir Ali is helping GM expand simulation-driven development â and why that shift is critical to the future of AV and automated driving. What excites you most about applying simulation-driven development at GM? GM has an incredible
May 27, 2026 · via news.gm.com
May 27, 2026 07:44 AM EDT
Featured Stories
High gas prices helping Honda sell more hybrids as it chases 10% share
Hybrids were nearly one-third of the Honda brand's sales in the first quarter, and the company expects them to stay in that range all year.
May 27, 2026 · via autonews.com
News FORT Robotics Acquires Mapless AI to Expand Its Trust Platform with Remote Supervision and Active Safety Capabilities Acquisition extends FORT from distributed control to supervised autonomy, delivering the human-in-the-loop and proactive safety capabilities physical AI demands PHILADELPHIA, PA, May 27, 2026 — FORT Robotics, the trust layer for physical AI, today announced the acquisition of Mapless AI, a Boston- and Pittsburgh-based leader in vehicle teleoperation and autonomy supervision. The acquisition represents a significant commercial expansion of FORT's Trust Platform, adding two critical new capabilities: remote human-in-the-loop teleoperation and onboard active safety. By integrating these technologies, FORT expands its market offering from safety-certified machine control to a comprehensive architecture for supervised autonomy. "The Physical AI market is a multi-billion-dollar economic engine, but its full potential can only be unlocked if machines are trustworthy enough to operate in real-world human environments," said Samuel Reeves, CEO of FORT Robotics. "The robotics industry is at a critical crossroads where impressive demos are everywhere, but scalability remains rare. Acquiring Mapless AI expands our platform to directly meet this vital need, allowing FORT to deliver the proactive safety frameworks our customers are asking for. We are building the foundational trust system to ensure that as robots become more autonomous, safety is an accelerator rather than a bottleneck." Building Trust in Physical AI: From Safe Control to Supervised Autonomy FORT has long been the industry standard for safety-certified control, providing autonomous systems with the essential hardware and software backbone required to mitigate real-world operational risk. The addition of Mapless AI's technology stack advances that foundation by introducing two major market solutions: - Human-in-the-Loop from Anywhere (Remote Teleoperation): The platform now enables seamless remote teleoperation across long distances, enabling an off-site specialist to safely monitor and operate vehicles or machine systems from anywhere. This capability addresses a
May 27, 2026 · via automate.org
opinion | May 27, 2026 Why Learning from Data Gets Harder in the Tail Lessons for Autonomous Driving Prof. Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Prof. Amnon Shashua Knowing the obstacle exists means we can navigate around it. The scaling paradox There's a puzzling gap in how machine learning systems improve. Classical learning theory tells us that as we collect more data, our models should get better at a steady, predictable rate—roughly proportional to how much new data we gather. But empirical evidence paints a different picture. Language models and end-to-end learning systems in the real world often improve much more slowly than theory predicts, requiring orders of magnitude more data for only marginal improvements. This isn't a failure of implementation—it's a fundamental consequence of how Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) interacts with certain problem structures. Understanding why matters deeply for autonomous driving, especially if one relies on end-to-end imitation learning to handle the full complexity of real-world scenarios. Grounding in empirical reality: the Chinchilla Law The severity of this problem becomes concrete when we look at empirical scaling laws. Recent research on large language models (the Chinchilla law) has shown how error decreases with the number of training examples \(T\), finding that error scales as \(T^{-\alpha}\) where \(\alpha < 0.1\). An exponent of \(0.1\) means convergence is orders of magnitude slower than classical learning theory predicts. To appreciate the implications: suppose we want to reduce error from \(10^{-2}\) to \(10^{-4}\)—a hundred-fold improvement. With \(\alpha = 0.1\), this requires: Twenty orders of magnitude more data. For systems requiring very high accuracy—like autonomous driving, where safety demands error rates far below \(10^{-4}\)—this scaling becomes prohibitively expensive. The theoretical construction below explains why this slow convergence arises from the interaction of weak supervision and heavy-tailed data when trained with SGD. The two properties that slow everything
May 27, 2026 · via mobileye.com
POTSDAM — Autonomous vehicles depend heavily on preprogrammed maps and routes, creating a major safety challenge when road conditions suddenly change in construction and work zones. Clarkson University students Robert Arcate and Sean Willis are researching ways to help autonomous vehicles safely adapt to those unpredictable environments in real time. Their project, “Ad-Hoc Route Navigation in Construction Zones for Autonomous Vehicles,” focuses on enabling autonomous vehicles to detect temporary roadway obstacles — including traffic cones, lane shifts, and road closures — and automatically generate alternate routes to safely navigate around them. Working under the guidance of Dr. Chen Liu in Clarkson’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team developed a system that uses onboard technologies including depth cameras, LiDAR, GPS, and additional sensors to identify construction barriers and determine the geographic coordinates of traffic cones. That data is then used to update the vehicle’s map information and reroute the vehicle safely through changing roadway conditions. The research addresses a growing concern for the future of autonomous transportation: how self-driving vehicles can safely operate in dynamic, real-world environments where traffic patterns may change rapidly and without warning. Construction zones remain particularly difficult for autonomous systems because many navigation platforms rely on static maps that may not reflect temporary road conditions. Beyond improving immediate navigation and roadway safety, the research also explores how newly generated detour routes could eventually be incorporated into broader mapping systems. Researchers say that capability could reduce future computing demands for autonomous vehicles navigating similar construction scenarios. The Clarkson team recently earned fourth place in the 2026 Designs for Safety Competition at the World Traffic Safety Symposium, held earlier this month in conjunction with the New York International Auto Show at the Javits Center in New York City. Arcate graduated in December 2025 with a master’s degree
May 27, 2026 · via nny360.com
Elbit Systems’ FUSE has acquired Israeli technology company Blue White Robotics, known as Bluewhite, in a deal that expands Elbit’s push into autonomous ground vehicles and defense robotics. FUSE acquired 100% of Bluewhite’s shares, the companies said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Bluewhite develops AI-powered autonomous systems for off-road and defense applications. Its technology is designed to work across different vehicle manufacturers, allowing conventional ground vehicles to be converted into autonomous platforms. The company’s main products include Pathfinder, an autonomy kit that converts standard vehicles into fully autonomous systems, and Compass, a cloud-based fleet operations platform. Together, the systems are meant to allow vehicle fleets to carry out complex missions in rugged environments. Bluewhite says its technology has accumulated more than 100,000 autonomous operating hours across agricultural and defense platforms. The company describes its ground autonomy system as a mature technology stack, with proven deployment in both civilian and military markets. For Elbit, the acquisition strengthens FUSE’s existing work in autonomous systems, adding ground robotics to a portfolio that already includes unmanned aerial and swarm technologies. The move is also intended to support the company’s development of robotic and manned-unmanned teaming solutions for defense and homeland security customers. "Autonomy and robotics are reshaping how defense forces operate today," said Eyal Dahan, CEO of Fuse. "The world is changing rapidly, and modern battlefields require the vast adoption of robotics capabilities. The integration of Bluewhite’s technologies into FUSE’s multi-domain ecosystem enhances our ability to deliver unified autonomous solutions across air, land, and indoor domains. This step enhances FUSE's autonomous robotics capabilities, positioning the company to effectively address the growing global demand for scalable, AI-powered autonomy". Bluewhite CEO Ben Alfi said the acquisition would allow the company’s technology to reach broader defense, security and industrial
May 27, 2026 · via ynetnews.com