Actual headline: Waymo responds to Tesla’s dick joke with a bigger Austin robotaxi map. We live in truly stupid times.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk posted an image of Tesla’s robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas, that was in the shape of a penis. Hilarious, I know, but more importantly: it appeared that Tesla’s map was slightly larger than Waymo’s service area, which covers just 37 square miles in Austin.
Today, Waymo announced its own expansion — minus the puerile humor. It’s just a bigger map with more customers for the Alphabet-owned company’s budding robotaxi business. And more pressure on Tesla to drop the dick jokes and get serious about autonomous driving.
Waymo’s new map covers 90 square miles in Austin, which is an increase from the current 37-square-mile service area. New neighborhoods include Crestview, Windsor Park, Sunset Valley, Franklin Park, and more, as well as popular destinations like The Domain and McKinney Falls State Park. Waymo provided a map, with the old service area in dark blue and the new one in light blue.
In its announcement, Waymo stressed that it’s “the only fully autonomous, 24/7 experience for anyone in Austin,” a clear reference to Tesla’s limitations. Waymo’s vehicles are unsupervised and available at any time, while Tesla’s vehicles include a safety monitor in the passenger seat, only operate between 6AM and midnight, and are invite-only.
Still, this is one of the first times that Waymo is experiencing competition in one of its robotaxi cities, and the company clearly relishes the fight. Waymo also stressed “no waitlists or caveats” as part of its service, which is available exclusively on the Uber app.
Service area is a key metric in operating a robotaxi service. Companies tend to target denser areas with more customers and more desirable locations, while also keeping in mind that expanding too rapidly could compromise safety.
Tesla’s robotaxis have already racked up a list of mistakes, and the presence of the safety monitor is a clear sign that the company isn’t confident enough in its technology to deploy its vehicles without supervision. Meanwhile, Austin residents have filed numerous complaints with the city about Waymo’s slow-moving, overly cautious vehicles. One customer got stuck inside a Waymo on a busy street. Still, there have been no serious safety incidents involving either company in Austin yet.
See here for the previous update. This was from last week, but you know how it is. Here’s a more recent story that looks at why this was more of a stunt on Elmo’s part than anything else, and that there remain real concerns about the full self-driving (FSD) tech at the heart of the autonomous Tesla business and why that is a hindrance to them scaling up.
While those two companies are out there measuring their, um, tailpipes, there’s a new kid in town.
More self-driving cars are making their way onto Austin’s roads, and one new company has roots right here in the Texas capital city. Avride is currently testing its autonomous vehicles throughout Austin.
The Austin-based tech company started developing its autonomous vehicles back in 2017. The engineering center where the cars are assembled, the software engineering team and the company’s offices are all located at its headquarters in North Austin.
The company said that what makes Avride unique from other similar companies is the collaboration between its two products: cars and robots. About two years after Avride started working on its self-driving cars, the company began developing autonomous food delivery robots.
“We are probably like the only company on the market which is developing the two products simultaneously, cars and robots,” said Yulia Shveyko, head of communications for Avride.
Both the autonomous vehicles and robots use similar technology like sensors, LiDAR (light and detection ranging) on the top and cameras to help them navigate the road and sidewalks safely.
“They use the same technological approaches, and when breakthrough happens in the robot team or the car team, these teams are happy to share this solution with each other,” Shveyko said.
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Currently, there’s about a few dozen autonomous vehicles driving around Austin, but in the coming months, Avride plans to have up to 100.
Avride’s food delivery robots are already in commercial deployment in Dallas, Austin and Jersey City, New Jersey, through Uber Eats. The company plans to start by launching its autonomous vehicles first in Dallas by the end of the year, then eventually in Austin.
Currently in Austin, Waymo and Tesla’s self-driving cars have been deployed, but Zoox and VW ADMT’s cars are still in testing.
Avride is a spinoff of the Russian company Yandex. I don’t know how good I’d feel about giving them my business; I’d probably pick them over anything still owned by Elon Musk, but that’s about it. Your mileage may vary. Avride, Zoox, and ADMT have all been mentioned here before. Per Axios, there’s a sixth company testing its rides in Austin, Hyundai’s Motional, which may someday be merged or subsumed by Waymo or Avride. Zoox, meanwhile, could be an underrated force. Me personally, I’d like to know just how much room there is for all these services in Austin. Like, does anyone drive themselves in Austin anymore? Place your bets on when any of this will be generally available in Houston. Reuters has more.