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Today is Juneteenth, a US federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.
About 10 years ago, there was a lot of talk about who was winning the self-driving car race. One of the problems with this debate—besides the assumption that there would be only one winner—was that no one had a reliable way to measure it. This was an early era filled with lots of demos and capital, but little substance – at least to what the public, and people like me, had access to.
Consulting and research startup Autonomy AI has developed a generative AI platform to create a benchmarking system that rates and ranks autonomous vehicle companies in an effort to answer this question in real time. And this week, the startup launched its own Index Road to Autonomywhich searches relevant global public databases, including federal and state reports, SEC filings, public exchanges and other data. The system weighs the company’s operations, scale, revenue, trade partnerships, manufacturing and security against this data and provides an update every 12 hours. There are four indicators that rank robotaxis, self-driving licensing companies, autonomous trucks and delivery bots.
An important note, according to Autnmy AI co-founder Rob Grant, the AI platform doesn’t just scrape information from the internet. “We agreed early on, we don’t divulge information,” he said. “If it’s publicly available or if it’s available under a Creative Commons license, we’ll use that information. We have some license data that we pay people for under that agreement as well.”
The indicators take a global approach, which produces some interesting results. One of the initial findings that struck Grant was China’s strongest ranking in many categories.
As of Friday, the leader of the robotaxi was not Waymo. It was from China Baidu Apollo Go program — barely. Waymo came in second place, followed by the Chinese companies Pony and WeRide. Tesla was in fifth place.
A little bird
I was recently reminded by a little bird watching Texas’ automated vehicle tracker that went live in May. And I’m glad they did. looks like Tesla, Waymoand Zoox create their respective fleets in the state. Reminder: This does not mean that all of these are used commercially. Zoox, for example, cannot operate commercially until it receives an exemption from the federal government. Currently, he is able to give rides in his custom-built robotaxi, but cannot charge customers.
As of May 28, Waymo had 577 autonomous vehicles registered in the state. It now has 620 of them, up about 7.5% in less than a month. Tesla now has 69 registered autonomous vehicles, a 64% increase from the 42 it had on May 28. Zoox, which had 35 registered autonomous vehicles last month, now has 43.
Avride, Nuroand subsidiary Volkswagen MOIA held steady at 317, 47 and 12, respectively.
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Offers!
Cargofya logistics company that uses artificial intelligence to automate freight operations, raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by u.ventures, Toloka and Movens Capital. Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, and several angel investors also participated.
CarroSingapore-based online car marketplace has acquired Australian used car platform CarPlace, Reuters reported. Terms were not disclosed.
Gatik, a startup that has developed autonomous trucks for short distances, announced a long-term cooperation with PepsiCo. The companies would not share the value of that deal, but it signals PepsiCo’s commitment to Gatik, which already operates driverless trucks for the food and beverage giant in Arkansas, Arizona and Texas.
QuantumScape announced a joint research agreement with Honda R&D Co. to accelerate the development of solid-state batteries and related manufacturing processes.
Automobile industry Stellandisstart autonomous driving Waveand riding giant Uber made a deal to jointly develop and deploy driverless robotics.
XDOFa startup focused on robot training data, raised $70 million from Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, a16z, Lux and WndrCo.
Notable reads and other items
A video posted on Reddit showed a driver running a stop sign and hitting an autonomous vehicle in Dallas. TechCrunch confirmed it was one Avride robotaxiwhich was hailed through the Uber app. An Avride spokesman said no injuries were reported and data from the incident was being reviewed “to continually improve our technology and processes as part of our standard procedures.” When asked about the reaction of the autonomous driving system and the human safety operator behind the wheel, Avride said: “Our safety review is ongoing, so we cannot provide more precise details at this time.”
Tesla owners in China have found a solution on the vehicle’s distracted driving screen: tiny plastic heads.
At X, people spotted a Tesla with one limousine license sticker for San Francisco County and San Francisco International Airport. An SFO spokesperson told TechCrunch that “Tesla has received a limousine license to operate at SFO. This is for traditional limousine operations, meaning the vehicles have a human driver. Tesla has not received a license for any autonomous operations at SFO.”
Mobileyewhich has emerged as a supplier of autonomous vehicle technology, is now making moves to become a robotaxi operator. The company plans to launch a robotaxi service in an unnamed US city in 2027. History lesson: Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua told me in 2020 that to crack the holy grail of passenger car autonomy, you first had to pursue robotaxis.
Uber plans to launch a premium robotaxi service in Houston by mid-2027, making it the second US market under its partnership with the EV maker Clear and autonomous vehicle launch Nuro.
Waymo recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 robotaxis to prevent them from driving in highway construction zones. Waymo took its robotaxis off highways weeks ago and has seen at least 13 instances of its robotaxis driving on sections of highway that were closed for construction. Here’s a detail worth noting: The software fix is ”under development,” which means that this issue has not been resolved.
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