Automated Driving Systems News Summary for May 2024

Here goes the fifth edition of my monthly driving automation news roundup. This effort is intended to catalogue industry announcements with focus primarily on Automated Driving Systems (ADS), but I may also cover some Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) news as well. I could never hope to hit everything, and my scope will focus on testing and pilot operations, private sector partnerships, and investment, rather than some of the other aspects that also get news coverage. This series is a personal endeavor and not tied to my employment or employer—any opinions expressed are my own as a private citizen.

The month of May 2024 closed with a celebration of "National Autonomous Vehicle Day" (May 31, 2024). I have seen several LinkedIn posts noting the observation and celebrating the day. I also know there were at least a few events going on across the country, so I hope many colleagues were able to connect, share, and drive the conversation forward as we finished out the month.

Speaking of coming together for exchanges on driving automation, I would like to take a moment to plug an upcoming event that I have had the honor of helping to plan, the TRB Automated Road Transportation Symposium (ARTS24). The event will convene in San Diego, CA from July 29 to August 1, 2024.? You can register online (link). There will be multiple ancillary meetings beginning at 9:00 am on Monday, July 29, 2024, so it may even make sense to travel in on Sunday. In a departure from the past several years, I will not be speaking this time around, but I will be attending and look forward to engaging with a range of experts in this area. I have also been planning multiple plenary and breakout sessions, and I am sure there will be a lot of good content for anyone who enjoys reading my news roundups. Information on the plenary program is being posted on the website (link), and information on all of the breakouts—topics, agendas, speakers—can be found online as well (link).

With that bit of a commercial out of the way, let’s get into the stories. Here is the news update for May 2024. As always, I hope these summaries are interesting and informative (and who knows, maybe even useful). Here are the highlights by topic area:

Goods Movement:

This month we saw several new heavy-duty truck prototypes unveiled—those included vehicles from Daimler Truck with an ADS from its Torc Robotics subsidiary (link), Volvo with an ADS from Aurora Innovation (link), and Hyundai with an ADS from Plus (link). Daimler’s “technology demonstrator” truck is an electric Freightliner Cascadia. The company has announced plans to begin hub-to-hub freight operations as part of a middle-mile freight hauling service on public roads in the Southwest United States by 2027. Volvo and Aurora’s “production-ready” ADS-equipped truck is a Volvo VNL model. Hyundai and Plus used a Hyundai Xcient hydrogen fuel cell electric model for their truck (link).

Outside of those unveilings, there were some additional bits of information from some of the ADS firms that work with smaller commercial trucks. Einride announced that it partnered with DP World to operate electric ADS-equipped trucks in Dubai, UAE (link). Gatik also saw some coverage this month from Bloomberg (link) and Forbes (link), though most of the information covered previous announcements (other than the new investment from Isuzu—see the “Investments” section for more information on that item). The other part that I thought was interesting was that Gatik currently has 65 trucks (ranging from Class 3 to 7) operating in its North American fleet.

There were a few tug and terminal tractor announcements this month too. Vehicles using ADS from Cyngn are being added to the RobotLAB portfolio (link). EasyMile and Terberg will test ADS-equipped terminal tractors at the Port of Helsingborg in Sweden (link). MAFI Transport-System GmbH and Arnold NextG are working together to retrofit ADS into terminal tractor vehicle platforms (link).

I did not see much in the way of news on personal delivery devices, or even much on light-duty delivery vehicle applications this month, but it is worth noting that Peugeot and Vay plan to use teleoperations equipment for delivery applications, and the two companies unveiled an ADS-equipped Peugeot E-308 model (link).

Public Transportation:

After a couple months with big ADS-equipped announcements, May 2024 was a little quieter. Of course, as I noted earlier this week, the Federal Transit Administration released its “Strategic Transit Automation Research (STAR) Plan 2.0” document (link), which builds out a research roadmap for the next five years. There were a couple announcements related to novel-design vehicles used to provide public transportation in the United States though. Beep plans to launch ADS-equipped low-speed shuttles on the Mississippi State University campus, and those will operate from September to November 2024 (link). Glydways and Contra Costa Transportation Authority announced plans to operate ADS-equipped Glydcar vehicles along a 28-mile-long enclosed roadway from Brentwood to Oakley, Antioch, and Pittsburg, CA (link). While I didn’t see anything that struck me as news (all the activities had been previously announced), in honor of “National Autonomous Vehicle Day,” Perrone Robotics put out a press release covering its current and planned activity related to ADS-equipped buses—there are a lot of activities going on in many locations ?across the country (link).

Internationally, there were a few other items worth highlighting. Alexander Dennis and Fusion Processing joined the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s Connector Project, which will operate ADS-equipped buses (a single bus in late summer 2024 and three buses in early 2025) on routes around Cambridge, United Kingdom (link). ADS-equipped bus operations began in the Yuhang District of Hangzhou, China (link).

I will admit that I am not a huge sports fan, but my in-laws absolutely love tennis, so I have caught a little of the French Open these past few days—earlier in May 2024, Renault and WeRide announced a that they would operate ADS-equipped shuttles between parking locations and Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, France (link).

Ride-Hail Service:

Waymo announced plans to begin providing employee-only rides in ADS-equipped vehicles along the San Francisco Peninsula, all the way down to Sunnyvale, CA, (link). I had previously reported on Waymo getting permission to expand its testing area, but this May was the first indication that operations were moving into those new geographies. Unstaffed operations will not cover that entire stretch, but will expand to include Daly City, San Bruno, and San Mateo. For now, operations in places like Redwood City, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara will include human safety drivers.

Cruise progressed in its Phoenix, AZ operations. Earlier in the month, the company reported that it had mapped approximately 40 percent of the metro area (link). A week or two later, it noted that it had begun operating two staffed ADS-equipped vehicles in automated mode (link). In late May 2024, Cruise also indicated plans to relaunch operations in Dallas, TX (initially with a limited geographic area and using manually driven vehicles), beginning in early June 2024 (link). While plans to use Cruise Origin vehicles appear to be on pause in the United States, Honda announced work with Teito Motor Transportation and Kokusai Motorcars to begin operating Cruise Origin vehicles in Japan beginning in 2026 (link).

Speaking of international activity, Baidu unveiled its 6th generation ADS-equipped vehicle model (link). The vehicle is reported to cost approximately $28,000. The company noted plans to use in on-demand operations in Beijing, China, and is targeting to have 1,000 of them out on roads by the end of 2024. The low price and ambitious target are eye-catching, but I will take a couple grains of salt on this one—we can wait and see.

Other Partnerships:

Wind River and Elektrobit partnered on foundational software for a few different areas, including automated driving (link).

Foretellix and Geely announced a strategic partnership to enable safe large-scale deployment (link).

HL Mando, Kakao Mobility, and KM Parking & Space partnered on ADS-equipped parking robots (link).

Kodiak Robotics and Textron Systems Corporation partnered to develop an ADS-equipped military ground vehicle (link).

Foresight and Hyundai's KONEC partnered to integrate 3D perception technology into a ADS-equipped concept vehicle (link).

Facilities:

The city of Jacksonville, FL introduced a resolution to grant $7.7 million in incentives for an ADS-equipped shuttle production facility in Jacksonville, FL (link). Reporting indicated that the manufacturer appears to be Holon (previously announced as a future shuttle provider partner to Beep). Jacksonville Transportation Authority and its partners (Balfour Beatty, Vision 2 Reality, and Beep) also held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Autonomous Innovation Center, which will serve as a command-and-control center (link).

Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) Testbed UK added the Catesby Tunnel (a 1.7-mile disused railway tunnel) in Northamptonshire, United Kingdom as one of its test facilities (link). It currently includes eight core test facilities (link).

Cavnue and Michigan Department of Transportation completed work to install equipment (poles with camera, radar, and radio equipment) on a three-mile stretch of I-94 (link). They also announced the launch of connected and automated vehicle testing soon (which will take place during off-peak hours of 9:00 am and 3:00 pm).

Investments:

There were several new investments announced in May 2024, including a couple large ones for Wayve and Motional. Wayve raised $1.05 billion in a funding round backed by SoftBank Group, NVIDIA, and Microsoft (link). Hyundai announced plans to invest $923 million in Motional ($475 million new funding and $448 million to purchase shares from Aptiv), leaving Hyundai with 85% control and Aptiv with 15% control of the joint venture (link).

In addition to those investments, Isuzu invested $30 million in Gatik (link) and Suzuki Motor Corporation invested an undisclosed amount in Glydways (link). Potential and Overland AI each held seed rounds to support off-road ADS applications. Potential raised approximately $1.5 million (link), and Overland AI raised $10 million (link). Momenta filed for an IPO in the United States and announced plans to raise $200-300 million (link).

Layoffs and Exits:

Following the announcement of new investment from Hyundai, Motional announced plans to restructure (link) and later indicated plans to lay off 40 percent of its workforce (link). Luminar also announced plans to lay off 20 percent of its workforce and outsource its manufacturing (link). While it did not announce layoffs, Samsung Electronics halted its ADS research efforts and prioritized robotics research instead (link).

Closing Thoughts:

Hopefully this review paints a decent condensed picture of recent ADS industry activity. As I have noted in previous editions, this review is not comprehensive (nor could it ever hope to be), but I am always interested in learning more, especially if I am missing something. Are there any big May 2024 items that were not reflected here that you feel should be represented? If so, please let me know and share links in the comments.