2023-08-20 09:03:50
After spending a decade or more in development, driverless autonomous taxis, or robotaxis, began appearing in a few limited places a couple of years ago. First as test vehicles with drivers on board, and a few years following those first steps, some companies began to launch limited services for their employees in cities like San Francisco, without paying customers on board and, generally, during the night to reduce contact with the massive traffic of peak hours.
But that’s regarding to change, as Autonomous technology developers and operators Waymo and Cruise have received permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to operate robotaxi services in the city of San Francisco and charge customers 24 hours a day. In a 3-1 vote, the Commission approved robotaxi operations in the city at all hours, not just at night, paving the way for a broader deployment of driverless Level 4 technology.
This huge victory for the robotaxi companies came, though, following a heated and contested public hearing that lasted half a day, in which the Commission heard the various opinions of local residents. The commission’s vote can be seen as one of the last major steps toward making robotaxi operations more widespread, at least in the city of San Francisco. The Commission noted that, in addition to their approval, Cruise and Waymo also had to obtain Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Program Permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and remain in good standing.
The Robotaxi controversy
Thus, both companies had to meet a series of city and state regulatory requirements in order to operate 24/7, and the authorization applied only to Waymo and Cruise.
However during During the last few months of operations, the robotaxis themselves had caused some controversy and even made the local news with very notable cases of malfunction.the last one occurred even following the approval, with 10 robotaxis involved collapsing a street in San Francisco.
In the age of camera phones, many traffic mishaps involving robotaxis implicated either as protagonists or witnesses to the event have been immortalized and published, while at the same time becoming a curiosity for visitors to the Bay Area and local residents, as well as the targets of activist groups that oppose their presence.
Fortunately for Cruise and Waymo, those mishaps might mostly fall into the category of minor fender dings or brief traffic blocking situations., caused by a robotaxi freezing on the road and refusing to move. In some ways, these scenes resembled the early days of automobiles mingling with horse-drawn traffic, drawing viewers in with every mistake.
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Justin Sullivan|Getty Images
In this sense, as we were able to discover recently, some activists found that placing traffic cones on the hood of robotaxis will cause them to freeze while driving on the streets in what is known as the Cone of Shame, as shown in the image above and which went viral on networks such as TikTok, while Waymo itself considered these acts a form of vandalism.
Perhaps understanding the inevitable teething problems with such technology, the commission noted some remaining gaps in current knowledge. “While we don’t yet have the data to compare autonomous vehicles with standard human drivers… I believe in the potential of this technology to increase highway safety,” said CPUC Commissioner John Reynolds.
Cruise has announced that he will begin mapping Miami in preparation for launching a fleet there.
The still audible cases of errors of certain vehicles
One of the most publicized incidents in recent months involved robotaxis failing to yield to fire trucks, ambulances and police cars, prompting a loud public rebuke of this young technology from the city’s fire marshal. in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. The San Francisco Fire Department has reported dozens of cases of autonomous taxis freezing in place, blocking streets as crews tried to respond to emergencies or getting too close to an active fire scene, the Times notes.
Cruise and Waymo, for their part, have offered first-responder collaboration in cases where robotic taxis are stranded or block traffic.
“Collaboration between key stakeholders in the industry and the rescue service community will be vital to solving problems as they arise in this innovative and emerging technology space,” Reynolds added.
Expansion to other cities
New problems with robotaxis can be expected to arise as companies expand their operations to other cities. In the last month alone, Cruise has announced that he will begin mapping Miami, in preparation for his landing there with a new fleet., following carrying out similar projects in Austin, Texas; and Phoenix, Ariz.
Meanwhile, Waymo expanded its operations to Los Angeles in late 2022, but hasn’t launched 24/7 service at the level seen in much smaller downtown San Francisco.
The different regulatory frameworks of each city for this type of activity mean that this type of company is still far from having truly profitable activities. At the moment, robotaxis definitely don’t compete with human drivers when it comes to operational cost, given the expensive hardware of the vehicles, not to mention the billions spent on development over the course of the last decade.
Despite gradual declines in the cost of such hardware, such as the increasingly popular LiDAR sensors, the industry is still far from driving humans out of economics, no matter how far the carsharing industry and the travel rental want to make it happen. That’s a huge change that hasn’t happened in this industry yet, but it might already be in its early stages.
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