San Francisco will be the unique testing ground for robot taxis – against resistance

San Francisco will be a unique proving ground for robotaxi services. The carriers Waymo and Cruise have been granted basic clearance to carry paying passengers throughout the city area 24 hours a day without a security driver. California’s regulatory body CPUC overcame opposition from city transit agencies and some residents with its Friday night decision.

With the extended permit, it is now possible for the first time after billions of investments to test on a large scale how well a business model with self-driving cars works. The vehicles are expensive. So they have to be busy as permanently as possible and earn money.

Cruise boss Kyle Vogt recently admitted that San Francisco has more than 10,000 people offering chauffeur services. “Of course these drivers don’t work 20 hours a day like a robotaxi can,” he noted. Vogt sees room for several thousand autonomous taxis in large cities.

Fears after blocked traffic

Critics say the self-driving cars sometimes block roads after software errors – hampering traffic and the work of emergency services. Eyewitness videos of cruise cars getting stuck at intersections are doing the rounds on the internet. Proponents see an advantage in the higher level of safety because computers, unlike humans, cannot be distracted behind the wheel.

Waymo is a sister company of Google, Cruise is owned by car giant General Motors. Both companies have been testing self-driving cars in San Francisco for years.

Currently, some of their vehicles are already on the road without a human at the wheel. In this case, only Cruise was allowed to take money from passengers – and only at night. Waymo cars used to be required to have a safety driver on board for commercial rides.

San Francisco test field

Cruise sees San Francisco as the perfect testing ground for training robotic car software. “If we can get self-driving cars to run in a city like San Francisco with its fog, hills and traffic, they’ll work pretty much everywhere,” Vogt recently stressed. Cruise is also expanding to other US cities. Waymo has suspended development of self-driving trucks to focus on robotaxis.

The CPUC’s decision opens the door to the commercial use of new robotaxis without steering wheels and pedals. Now Cruise and Waymo are using electric vehicles converted to self-driving cars, but they are preparing passenger-only cars. Zoox, which is now owned by Amazon, also wants to put such vehicles on the road.

costs must be reduced

The cost of the technology should also come down. Cruise and GM are currently developing a tech platform for the upcoming robot taxis that will be 75 percent cheaper, Vogt said in July. It should be introduced by the end of next year. Then the “magic threshold” of less than a dollar per mile comes into view, after which it will be cheaper for most people to drive a robotaxi than to own a car.

The CPUC, which is responsible for utilities, approved the expansion of services after an hour-long hearing by a majority of three of the four commissioners present. At the same time, a hearing with an initial interim report is being considered for the autumn.

The euphoria surrounding autonomous driving has noticeably diminished in recent years. The technology turned out to take more time and money than many in the industry initially thought. Some gave up in between. The driver broker Uber has sold its robot car division. Apple, on the other hand, continues to drive its test cars through Silicon Valley. In Germany, the company Mobileye, which belongs to chip giant Intel, wants to set up a robotaxi service.

(dsc/sda/dpa)