08/16/2022
Global Steps Toward Autonomous Taxis
The motorized vehicle industry has already begun the race to release self-driving cars to consumers; the next race, however, is releasing self-driving, unmanned vehicles for public and private transportation.
China is the first country to allow self-driving, unmanned vehicles as taxi services in two cities, led by Baidu Inc. The Chinese cities Wuhan, with a 5 square mile radius, and Chongqing, with a 12 square mile radius, have opened services to the public, but each city is only allowed five cars for now. Beijing is following closely behind, but each vehicle must have someone overseeing the operations in the passenger seat. It is believed that by the end of the October-December quarter, Beijing will have 600 self-driving taxis with one attendant per two vehicles.
In the United States, Waymo (parented by Alphabet Inc.) and Cruise (parented by General Motors) are the leading companies in autonomous vehicles. Waymo began sending out supervised autonomous taxis in Suburban Phoenix, Arizona, in 2017 for test rides. Then, in 2020, they expanded to Chandler, Arizona, and removed the supervisors. Chandler was chosen as the geographical test region for unmanned vehicles due to the city’s primarily straight roads, stable weather conditions year-round, and a smaller population with less than 300,000 potential riders. In addition, Waymo allows riders to order vehicles in the early morning and late afternoon using Google Maps.
In San Francisco, Cruise allows passengers to ride between 10:30 pm and 5 am. Cruise is the only company to have started the application process for charging public rides through California Public Utilities Commission thus far, making San Francisco the first city in the United States to allow official unmanned taxi services to the public.
Six other companies have started exploring autonomous, unmanned taxis in California, but all eight use software technology by Mobileye, a company parented by Intel. Mobileye equips vehicles with 13 cameras, six radar units, three long-range lidar sensors, and six short-range lidar sensors (lidar sensors detect light around the vehicle, which allows the car to interpret its surroundings). In addition, the vehicle map system is crowdsourced, enabling the vehicles to travel anywhere rather than being confined to certain zones. These vehicles are some of the most equipped vehicles on the market; however, safety is still a concern for the companies. We must take many steps before fully autonomous vehicles can take the roads without supervision. It is believed that these vehicles will be used for transporting on fixed routes first. These vehicles will probably be shuttles or vans that deliver goods to the airports, docks, warehouses, factories, etc. This pushes the autonomous, unmanned taxi services out at least five more years before they will be fully operational across the United States.
Raffaele Huang, August 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-chinese-cities-approve-baidus-unmanned-self-driving-taxis-11659939689?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
Megan Bobrowsky, March 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/waymo-to-send-driverless-cars-through-san-francisco-11648648800?mod=article_inline
Beth McLoughlin, November 2021
Self-driving taxis are not arriving as soon as you think | HERE
