Emerging Technology
Waymo Tests In 10 New Cities, Cruise Wrap-Up Saves $1 Billion, & Tesla Brings FSD Robotaxis
Updated on Thu, Jan 30, 2025
Share
In the last couple of years, the interest in robotaxis has skyrocketed.
This includes customers who are keen on trialing driverless taxicabs, automakers who are tirelessly innovating to produce the most advanced fully self-driving vehicles that can be deployed on city roads, as well as ride-hailing companies that can operate vehicles without the need for human drivers.
Additionally, the advancements made in artificial intelligence (AI) technology over the last couple of years have enabled autonomous vehicles (AV) to perform better in real-world situations.
In short, autonomous mobility is one of the hottest commodities in the technology world at the moment, and one of its most promising avenues is robotaxis.
Robotaxis are self-driving taxis, and they’ve garnered a lot of headlines over the last few years—some good, some bad.
In the good corner (mostly), is the Alphabet-owned Waymo.
Waymo has had way more luck in the autonomous mobility sector than any other company engaged in the industry.
From partnering with Uber to driving into new locations, to expanding its services to a whole new country (Tokyo), Waymo has lived up to its label of being an industry leader.
Now, the company is looking to test its vehicles in ten new cities in the United States, an expansion that begins with venturing into Las Vegas (Nevada) and San Diego (California).
However, in the case of this expansion, the vehicles will be manually driven and are not meant to be thought of as a prelude to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service.
Instead, the move is being made to see how well its self-driving system can adapt to new locations with diverse weather conditions and regional driving habits.
“So, what we’re looking for is places that are going to challenge our system and look very, very different,” Nick Rose, product manager for Waymo’s expansion efforts, told The Verge. “Las Vegas is pretty interesting because, I mean, if you’ve ever been to Vegas, it’s pretty unique among a lot of US cities.”
“When we go to a brand new city in the US, there are things that are subtly different. And we want to see how well the driver performs on those things out of the box without having to retrain or make adjustments.”
As such, Las Vegas offers the company an opportunity to test its products on dense and chaotic roads. On the other hand, San Diego is similar to other cities that Waymo operates in already, however, it will allow them to ascertain how the system performs in a place where it doesn’t have a driving history.
“The general theme is to collect enough experience to where we can get a pretty statistically significant sense of how well we’re generalizing, especially these perception things,” said Rose.
This move adds to previous locations that Waymo has tested in, which includes Truckee (California), upstate New York, and Michigan, as well as cities in which it plans full operations: Austin (Texas), Atlanta (Georgia), and Miami (Florida).
General Motors’ (GM) Cruise is one company on the other end of the spectrum—or should we say it was?
Last year, the company decided to shut operations and wind up its robotaxi dream—despite several attempts to revive it—after a few serious incidents. This even led to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) suspending its permit.
GM also cut funding for Cruise by $1 billion in 2024, which saw the company earn a revenue of just $100 million, compared to an EBIT-adjusted loss of $2.7 billion.
Now, almost two months later, the company says it expects to save up to $1 billion annually by bringing its Cruise robotaxi development program to an end, as revealed by CEO and Chair Mary Barra during an earnings call.
“GM has proposed a restructuring plan that will refocus our autonomous driving strategy on personal vehicles,” said Barra.
This stance was reiterated by CFO Paul Jacobson, who said, “We believe our refocused autonomous driving strategy will lead to efficiencies and a $1 billion annual run rate savings in our investment relative to the $1.7 billion we spent on Cruise in 2024.”
At the same time, GM also reported it endured a $2.9 billion loss for Q4 2024.
Instead, GM will focus on developing its Super Cruise driver assistance technology, a rival to Tesla's Autopilot. The expecation is to rake in billions of dollars in revenue.
Tesla announced its intention to challenge Waymo and Cruise a while ago, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealing in April 2024 that the company was set to unveil its Robotaxi.
This unveiling finally occurred in October 2024 at the company’s We, Robot event, which also confirmed that Tesla’s robotaxi would be called Cybercab.
The event also saw Tesla unveil its Robovan (pronounced ruh-BO-vehn as per Musk), which is also a self-driving vehicle intended as a ride-hailing service but will also be available to people for purchase.
Now, Tesla is set to revolutionize the autonomous vehicles industry, as Tesla will be bringing its "unsupervised" robotaxi service, which will be introduced first in Austin (Texas).
However, this particular revolution will have to wait till June, because that’s when the robotaxi will be launched.
This announcement was also made by Musk during an earnings call, in which he stressed that safety would be a top priority, saying, "We just want to put a toe in the water, make sure everything's okay, put a few more toes in the water, with safety of the general public and those in the car as a top priority.”
Tesla’s robotaxi has been under testing in the Bay Area since last year with its employees.
As such, Musk is confident about the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology system, where a part of this confidence is down to Tesla’s massive increase in its AI training compute, which rose over 400% in 2024.
The company is currently streamlining its manufacturing process, as Tesla showed off the technology in action—it revealed that the cars possessed the ability to take themselves to logistics lots at its factories.
Do you think Waymo should bring its driverless robotaxi services to more cities and countries? Do you think Tesla will be able to challenge Waymo’s supremacy?
Let us know in the comments below!
This includes customers who are keen on trialing driverless taxicabs, automakers who are tirelessly innovating to produce the most advanced fully self-driving vehicles that can be deployed on city roads, as well as ride-hailing companies that can operate vehicles without the need for human drivers.
Additionally, the advancements made in artificial intelligence (AI) technology over the last couple of years have enabled autonomous vehicles (AV) to perform better in real-world situations.
In short, autonomous mobility is one of the hottest commodities in the technology world at the moment, and one of its most promising avenues is robotaxis.
Robotaxis are self-driving taxis, and they’ve garnered a lot of headlines over the last few years—some good, some bad.
In the good corner (mostly), is the Alphabet-owned Waymo.
Waymo
Waymo has had way more luck in the autonomous mobility sector than any other company engaged in the industry.
From partnering with Uber to driving into new locations, to expanding its services to a whole new country (Tokyo), Waymo has lived up to its label of being an industry leader.
Now, the company is looking to test its vehicles in ten new cities in the United States, an expansion that begins with venturing into Las Vegas (Nevada) and San Diego (California).
However, in the case of this expansion, the vehicles will be manually driven and are not meant to be thought of as a prelude to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service.
Instead, the move is being made to see how well its self-driving system can adapt to new locations with diverse weather conditions and regional driving habits.
“So, what we’re looking for is places that are going to challenge our system and look very, very different,” Nick Rose, product manager for Waymo’s expansion efforts, told The Verge. “Las Vegas is pretty interesting because, I mean, if you’ve ever been to Vegas, it’s pretty unique among a lot of US cities.”
“When we go to a brand new city in the US, there are things that are subtly different. And we want to see how well the driver performs on those things out of the box without having to retrain or make adjustments.”
As such, Las Vegas offers the company an opportunity to test its products on dense and chaotic roads. On the other hand, San Diego is similar to other cities that Waymo operates in already, however, it will allow them to ascertain how the system performs in a place where it doesn’t have a driving history.
“The general theme is to collect enough experience to where we can get a pretty statistically significant sense of how well we’re generalizing, especially these perception things,” said Rose.
This move adds to previous locations that Waymo has tested in, which includes Truckee (California), upstate New York, and Michigan, as well as cities in which it plans full operations: Austin (Texas), Atlanta (Georgia), and Miami (Florida).
Cruise
General Motors’ (GM) Cruise is one company on the other end of the spectrum—or should we say it was?
Last year, the company decided to shut operations and wind up its robotaxi dream—despite several attempts to revive it—after a few serious incidents. This even led to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) suspending its permit.
GM also cut funding for Cruise by $1 billion in 2024, which saw the company earn a revenue of just $100 million, compared to an EBIT-adjusted loss of $2.7 billion.
Now, almost two months later, the company says it expects to save up to $1 billion annually by bringing its Cruise robotaxi development program to an end, as revealed by CEO and Chair Mary Barra during an earnings call.
“GM has proposed a restructuring plan that will refocus our autonomous driving strategy on personal vehicles,” said Barra.
This stance was reiterated by CFO Paul Jacobson, who said, “We believe our refocused autonomous driving strategy will lead to efficiencies and a $1 billion annual run rate savings in our investment relative to the $1.7 billion we spent on Cruise in 2024.”
At the same time, GM also reported it endured a $2.9 billion loss for Q4 2024.
Instead, GM will focus on developing its Super Cruise driver assistance technology, a rival to Tesla's Autopilot. The expecation is to rake in billions of dollars in revenue.
Tesla
Tesla announced its intention to challenge Waymo and Cruise a while ago, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealing in April 2024 that the company was set to unveil its Robotaxi.
This unveiling finally occurred in October 2024 at the company’s We, Robot event, which also confirmed that Tesla’s robotaxi would be called Cybercab.
The event also saw Tesla unveil its Robovan (pronounced ruh-BO-vehn as per Musk), which is also a self-driving vehicle intended as a ride-hailing service but will also be available to people for purchase.
Now, Tesla is set to revolutionize the autonomous vehicles industry, as Tesla will be bringing its "unsupervised" robotaxi service, which will be introduced first in Austin (Texas).
However, this particular revolution will have to wait till June, because that’s when the robotaxi will be launched.
This announcement was also made by Musk during an earnings call, in which he stressed that safety would be a top priority, saying, "We just want to put a toe in the water, make sure everything's okay, put a few more toes in the water, with safety of the general public and those in the car as a top priority.”
Tesla’s robotaxi has been under testing in the Bay Area since last year with its employees.
As such, Musk is confident about the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology system, where a part of this confidence is down to Tesla’s massive increase in its AI training compute, which rose over 400% in 2024.
The company is currently streamlining its manufacturing process, as Tesla showed off the technology in action—it revealed that the cars possessed the ability to take themselves to logistics lots at its factories.
Do you think Waymo should bring its driverless robotaxi services to more cities and countries? Do you think Tesla will be able to challenge Waymo’s supremacy?
Let us know in the comments below!
First published on Thu, Jan 30, 2025
Liked what you read? That’s only the tip of the tech iceberg!
Explore our vast collection of tech articles including introductory guides, product reviews, trends and more, stay up to date with the latest news, relish thought-provoking interviews and the hottest AI blogs, and tickle your funny bone with hilarious tech memes!
Plus, get access to branded insights from industry-leading global brands through informative white papers, engaging case studies, in-depth reports, enlightening videos and exciting events and webinars.
Dive into TechDogs' treasure trove today and Know Your World of technology like never before!
Disclaimer - Reference to any specific product, software or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by TechDogs nor should any data or content published be relied upon. The views expressed by TechDogs' members and guests are their own and their appearance on our site does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by TechDogs' Authors are those of the Authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of TechDogs or any of its officials. While we aim to provide valuable and helpful information, some content on TechDogs' site may not have been thoroughly reviewed for every detail or aspect. We encourage users to verify any information independently where necessary.
Loading comments...