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TechCrunch Mobility: AV companies pick their lanes
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
Autonomous vehicle technology is not yet ubiquitous or mainstream. Readers here might shout, “It’s everywhere!” but I can tell you that it is not — although I understand why folks in the San Francisco Bay Area might disagree.
The tech is, however, being commercialized and that transition from testing to commercial product has me thinking about scale. A few strategies are emerging.
Scale through partnerships. A couple of announcements this week highlighted this strategy. Wayve locked in a commercial partnership with Mercedes-Benz to integrate the startup’s automated driving tech into at least one model set to be deployed within the next two years. This is a Level 2 type product, meaning it handles certain driving maneuvers but still requires the human driver to remain engaged. While this is not a Level 4, or fully driverless product, it gives Wayve reach and follows similar deals with Nissan and Stellantis. Those partnerships have also opened doors for its fully driverless product. Earlier this year, Wayve announced a partnership with Nissan and Uber to launch a robotaxi service in Tokyo.
Widespread and concentrated, all at once. As I wrote this week, Waymo’s commercial robotaxi ramp-up looks expansive, both in geographic reach and ridership. And by almost every measure, it is — until you pay attention to where the bulk of those robotaxis are actually showing up.
I looked at vehicle registration data and found that, at least for now, Waymo is concentrating its efforts in just two states. About 80% of Waymo’s roughly 4,000 robotaxis are in California and Texas, and Texas is where the action is now: Waymo’s fleet there has grown by more than 49% in the past three weeks.
Waymo is also scaling by seeking out new kinds of users: teenagers.
I might put Aurora, a company developing and commercializing self-driving trucks, somewhere between these two categories. Aurora is clearly focused on Texas, but it has cast a wide net when it comes to partners. CEO Chris Urmson is also clearly bullish on how the company will scale over the next four years, noting this week that Aurora has “emerged from the building stage.” The company said it’s targeting more than 30,000 driverless trucks in operation by 2030. The company plans to have more than 200 driverless trucks by the end of the year.
Our little bird items are typically just that: small yet notable nuggets of insider information from across the transportation industry. But every now and then, a tip turns into something much bigger.
That’s what happened a few weeks ago, when Zoox workers reached out to senior reporter Sean O’Kane about a problem with the company’s test fleet in Atlanta. Workers were getting sick, and they suspected it was from its test vehicles, Toyota Highlander SUVs equipped with Zoox’s self-driving system.