An entire city becomes a test field for robotaxi services: the companies Waymo and Cruise have received general permission to transport paying passengers in San Francisco around the clock without a security driver. With its decision on Friday night, the Californian regulatory authority CPUC overrode the resistance of the municipal transport company and some residents.
With the permit, after investing billions, it can now be tried out on a large scale for the first time to see how well a business model with self-driving cars really works. The vehicles are expensive. They must therefore be as permanently busy as possible and earn money. Cruise boss Kyle Vogt recently admitted that San Francisco has more than 10,000 people who offer driving services. “Of course, these drivers don’t work 20 hours a day like a robotaxi can,” he said. Vogt sees room for several thousand autonomous taxis in large cities.
Critics say the driverless cars sometimes block the roads after software errors – and thus impede traffic and the work of emergency services. Eyewitness videos of Cruise cars jamming up at intersections are doing the rounds on the internet. Proponents see an advantage in the higher level of safety, since unlike people, computers cannot be distracted at the wheel.
If it works in San Francisco, then it works everywhere – right?
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 – but not across the board. Currently, some of their vehicles are already on the road without a human being at the wheel. In this case, only Cruise was allowed to take money from passengers – and only at night. Waymo cars used to have to have a safety driver on board for commercial trips.
Cruise sees San Francisco as the perfect testing ground for training robot car software. “If we can let self-driving cars drive in a city like San Francisco with its fog, hills and traffic, they will work just about anywhere,” Vogt recently pointed out. Cruise is expanding to other US cities as well. Waymo shelved development of self-driving trucks to focus on robotaxis.
The costs have yet to come down
The CPUC’s decision opens the door to the commercial use of novel robotaxis without steering wheels and pedals. Now, Cruise and Waymo are using electric vehicles converted into self-driving cars, but they are preparing passenger-only cars. Zoox, which now belongs to Amazon, also wants to put such vehicles on the road.
The cost of the technology is also expected to decrease. Cruise and GM are currently developing a technical platform for the upcoming robotic 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 one dollar per mile will be in sight in terms of costs, from which it will be cheaper for most people to drive a robotaxi than to own a car.
The CPUC, which is responsible for utility services, approved the extension of services after a hearing lasting several hours by a majority of three of the four commissioners present. At the same time, another hearing with an initial interim assessment is being considered for autumn.
The euphoria surrounding autonomous driving has subsided noticeably in recent years. The technology turned out to take more time and money than many in the industry originally thought. Some gave up in between. The driving service broker Uber sold its robot car division. Apple, on the other hand, continues to drive its test cars around Silicon Valley. In Germany, the company Mobileye, which belongs to the chip giant Intel, wants to set up a robotaxi service.