Automated Driving Systems News Summary for October 2024
Joshua Cregger
Technology Policy Analyst at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center
Welcome to the tenth edition of my monthly driving automation news roundup—the effort is intended to catalogue industry announcements with focus primarily on automated driving and associated technologies. Almost everything I cover will relate to Automated Driving Systems (ADS), but I may also occasionally include Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) news items.
I intend to emphasize the state of the technology (e.g., development, testing, and demonstration/pilot operations) and the market (e.g., private sector partnerships and investment), and I will not cover some of the other aspects that also get media attention (e.g., opinion/think pieces, third-party analyses and reports, or collisions and other incidents). Even with that scope, these updates will never be comprehensive, but I will share what I catch (and will ask readers to help me fill in any remaining gaps).
As always, this series is a personal endeavor and not tied to my employment or employer—any opinions expressed are my own as a private citizen.
Following the change-up in heading art for last month’s edition, I plan to continue using photos from ADS-equipped vehicles I encounter on the roads, in demonstrations, or on exhibition floors. Unlike last month, when I was able to share images of an ADS-equipped bus I rode at Sleeping Bear Dunes, this past month I did not have the chance to encounter a new vehicle, so I had to dig back into the archive. Since I was digging, I thought I would show off a couple of my earliest ADS experiences—one is a Induct "Navia" shuttle (the ancestor of Navya and EasyMile shuttles) that was operating during ITS World Congress in Detroit in 2014, and the other is the Robotic Research (now Forterra) ARIBO shuttle that was operating at Fort Bragg in 2017.
In future months’ editions I will start working through the photo backlog and toward more contemporary driving automation systems, and I plan to attend CES again this coming January, so I should have some fresh and new demonstration photos to show off in a month or two. If you will also be attending CES or know of any interesting demonstrations I should make sure not to miss, reach out to me, and we can plan to connect in person in a couple months! ?
With that, let’s get into the news stories from the past month—here is the update for October 2024. I hope these summaries are interesting, informative, and maybe even useful. Here are the highlights by topic area:
Goods Movement:
One of the big themes for heavy-duty commercial trucks in has been the movement towards unstaffed operations. Aurora had previously set a target of launching unstaffed operations on a route between Dallas, TX and Houston, TX sometime in 2024, but in October 2024, it announced that it would delay that planned launch until April 2025 (link). Torc Robotics had announced a later target of unstaffed operations on public roads, but it is working to make progress toward that goal. In October, it began conducting unstaffed testing of an ADS-equipped Freightliner Cascadia truck on a closed course in Texas (link). Gatik has previously conducted unstaffed operations in Bentonville, AR and Toronto, ONT. This past month, it announced plans for unstaffed operations in north Texas in early 2025 (link). Gatik also announced partnerships with Edge Case Research and Tüv Süd to validate its development and safety processes (link).
There were also a few announcements related to last-mile delivery. While its main focus has always been on-demand ride-hail, Cruise has also conducted multiple last-mile delivery activities. I have been reporting on the relaunching of Cruise activity the past couple months, and this month, it announced the first relaunch of goods movement work I have seen when it partnered with Houston Food Bank to deliver food to new and expectant mothers in Houston, TX (link). While I had hypothesized that we might see multimodal automated deliveries with different types of vehicles or devices working together, I finally have an example beyond a show floor demonstrations, as Serve Robotics and Wing Aviation announced a pilot in Dallas, TX where Serve's personal delivery devices (PDDs) will pick up food from restaurants and transfer it to Wing drones for aerial delivery (link). Speaking of PDDs, Avride and Uber plan to use Avride’s PDDs for the Uber Eats service in Austin, TX later this year (link). That launch will be followed by service launches in Dallas, TX and Jersey City, NJ in 2025. Looking outside of the United States, the supermarket chain FairPrice Group began testing ADS-equipped vehicles for goods movement on public roads in Singapore (link).
On-Demand Ride-Hail:
In the United States, Waymo hit the milestone of providing more than 150,000 paid trips weekly (link), and it also expanded its service as it began offering unstaffed Waymo One rides to a subset of preapproved members of the public in Austin, TX (link). It also announced a public transit credit pilot program for riders in San Francisco, CA (link) and partnered with Hyundai to integrate its ADS into Hyundai's Ioniq 5 SUV, which will eventually be added to the Waymo One fleet (link). In addition to resuming staffed operations and manual driving in Houston and Dallas, TX, and Phoenix, AZ, Cruise has begun conducting limited unstaffed testing in Houston, TX (link). Zoox announced plans to launch service in San Francisco, CA and Las Vegas, NV (link), and it also announced a partnership with the Vegas Golden Knights (link). The previously mentioned partnership announced by Uber and Avride for goods movement also included the use of Avride’s ADS-equipped vehicles for Uber passenger service in Austin, TX with later launches in Dallas, TX and Jersey City, NJ (link).
Tesla held an event to unveil its "Cybercab" and "Robovan" models and provided rides on a closed course at Warner Bros. Discovery Studios in Burbank, CA (link). The company also announced plans to launch a paid on-demand ride-hailing service in unstaffed ADS-equipped vehicles in California and Texas in 2025 (link), and it started conversations to potentially launch that service in Palo Alto, CA (link). It also revealed that it has been testing the functionality of its ride-hailing app with employees in L2 ADAS-equipped vehicles in California for the past few months? (link).
Outside of the United States, there were a few on-demand operations to highlight as well. WeRide unveiled the "GXR," its next generation ADS-equipped vehicle for on-demand service (link). Pony.ai and Emile Weber partnered to support research, development, and operation of ADS-equipped vehicles in Luxembourg (link). May Mobility and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) announced on-demand operations at the NTT Central Training Center in Tokyo, Japan and near Nagoya Station in Nagoya City, Japan (link).
Transit and Microtransit:
Transit was a little quieter this past month than it has been in other recent months. In the United States T-Mobile and Miller Electric partnered to support 5G connectivity for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority Ultimate Urban Circulator (U2C) program (link). Oxa announced that it applied its ADS to Ford E-Transit vans and minibuses for use in the United States and the United Kingdom (link). Beep operates that Cumberland Community Improvement District “Hopper” shuttle service, which hit the 10,000 rider milestone—that service is nearing its end and will conclude in December 2024 (link). Mozee, a novel-design ADS-equipped shuttle manufacturer, announced it will move its headquarters to Arlington, TX (link). Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation issued a request for expressions of interest for an ADS service that would connect the its campus to nearby subway stations in New York City, NY (link).
There were also a couple international transit-related pilot news items, including that the Solihull & Coventry Automated Links Evolution (SCALE) project announced plans to launch a pilot will with three Ohmio shuttles on a four-mile route in Birmingham, United Kingdom (link). MACIF provided an update on an ADS-equipped shuttle pilot in Val de Dr?me - Crest, France (link). Aomori Prefecture and Towada City conducted an ADS-equipped shuttle demonstration along the Oirase Gorge in Japan (link), and TIER IV announced an ADS-equipped bus service along the route between Shiojiri Station and Shiojiri City Hall in Shiojiri, Japan (link).
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Level 3 ADS:
A couple automakers were in the news for their Level 3 ADS efforts. General Motors confirmed it is working on a Level 3 ADS for its vehicles (link), and Honda announced that it will install a Level 3 ADS in the Honda 0 EV series vehicles that it plans to launch in 2026 (link).
Advance Driver Assistance Systems:
While Wayve may ultimately focus on ADS, it seems that its immediate work will be more focused on ADAS. It announced that it began testing ADAS-equipped Mustang Mach-E vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA (link).
Tools and Support Systems:
MITRE and Mcity partnered to launch a digital platform for validation of connected ADS-equipped vehicles (link).
Other Modes:
This category is a bit of a potpourri, but there are a few items of interest to highlight:
Investments and Strategy:
I had previously covered IPO plans that were in the works, but a few of them finally came to fruition in October. Both WeRide (link) and Pony.ai (link) filed for IPOs in the United States. WeRide raised around $440M and valuing the company at more than $4B. Pony AI noted that it seeks to raise up to $300M, and it was announced that Pony.ai will receive $100M from NEOM (link) and $27M from GAC Group (link). Horizon Robotics filed for an IPO in Hong Kong and raised $696M (link).
There was also a lot of funding and investment activity in the past month. The biggest announcement came from Waymo, which raised $5.6B in a Series C round (link). On a similar magnitude, it was reported that Toyota and NTT plan to invest approximately $3.3B in ADS research and development (link). Outrider (an automated yard truck firm) raised $62M in a Series D round (link), and Third Wave Automation (an automated forklift firm) raised $27M in a Series C round (link). Vay (a teleoperations firm) will receive approximately $37M from the European Investment Bank (link). In terms of seed funding, Lidwave (a 4D lidar-on-a-chip developer) raised $10M (link) and Sonair (an ultrasonic sensor developer) raised $6.8 M (link). Xnergy (a startup focused on contactless charging solutions for ADS-equipped vehicles) received an undisclosed investment from Accuron Technologies and Hyundai CRADLE (link).
While many companies are ramping up, others are winding down. I previously covered the retreat of Apple from this space, but October 2024 brought further confirmation that Apple ceased ADS testing work in California, and it officially requested that California DMV cancel its testing permit (link). I had also previously covered the closure of Ghost Autonomy, but in the spirt of the season, at least some of its IP appears ready to rise from the grave, as Applied Intuition announced the purchase of its patents (link).
Closing Thoughts:
I hope this snapshot of driving automation news from October 2024 offers you a clear and concise view of the recent developments. While I try to capture key highlights in these reviews, they will never be completely exhaustive (I may miss some items, especially those that might be at the edge of my scope). If there are any October 2024 updates that did not make this update, please let me know! Feel free to leave a comment and a link—I always like to learn more, and I am sure other readers will appreciate it too.
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1 个月November’s here with its crisp air and stunning autumn colors! ?? Excited for the latest automated driving news summary—can’t wait to see what innovations and updates are making waves this month! ????