GM Cruise robotaxis start service in Tesla’s Austin – FSD still nowhere to be found
GM’s Cruise autonomous taxi service has started taking driverless taxi rides in downtown Austin, Texas. It’s a shot across the bow of Tesla, now headquartered just outside of Austin, which has been promising self-driving robotaxis for years now, but keeps pushing them back.
Cruise has been operating a free driverless taxi service in San Francisco since earlier this year, and even started taking paid fares in June. In doing so, it beat its rival, Google’s Waymo, to the punch.
It also beat Tesla to that same goal, which has been talking about autonomous robotaxis (which they used to call “Tesla Network”) for over six years. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said “Tesla will have 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of the year,” but later changed that goal to 1 million people in FSD beta.
We got our first real-life glimpse of Cruise’s Austin service in a 7-minute video posted to Twitter last night, which you can watch embedded below:
Cruise’s Austin service is not completely open to the public yet. It’s currently restricted to “friends & family” of Cruise employees, though they are taking actual paid rides, instead of launching with free rides first as they did in San Francisco. You can sign up to get on Cruise’s waitlist here, for when they decide to open up availability further.
Along with service in Austin, Cruise also started service in Phoenix this week. Phoenix is notable because, like Austin, one of Cruise’s competitors has already set up shop there. Waymo has been offering rides to the public in Phoenix since earlier this year, and has previously done some testing in Austin. Waymo also recently started offering airport trips in Phoenix.
This completes Cruise’s goal of having autonomous taxis running in three cities by the end of this year. Prior to now, they had only operated in San Francisco.
Cruise’s service has not been without its problems, though. Early this year one of their cars got pulled over by the police and then “bolted” off, and just last week the NHTSA opened an investigation into Cruise’s vehicles causing accidents, stopping abruptly and blocking roadways.
And these autonomous rides are still quite limited. Cruise and Waymo’s strategy differs from Tesla in that both companies are limiting their vehicles to lower-speed, geofenced areas that have been mapped out ahead of time. Service is also limited to 10 p.m. – 5:30 a.m. Wed-Sun, when streets tend to have fewer drivers and pedestrians, and thus self-driving problems are simpler.
This allows programmers to focus on a more limited set of circumstances, and limit damage in case anything goes wrong, as there are fewer people and objects on the road to cause trouble for if the driverless car has a problem.
But Cruise says that focusing on these similar areas helped them to get their Austin project off the ground quickly. It only took 90 days for them to go from zero mapping to fully autonomous service in Austin, an impressively fast timeline.
Tesla’s focus is on generalized self-driving, rather than being limited to certain areas. This is a much harder problem to solve, because different areas have different road types, signs, rules, driver behaviors, and so on.
Tesla does have a significant lead in some ways – its data collection far outpaces other automakers, for example. But CEO Musk has also been promising various self-driving milestones “by the end of this year” for almost a decade now, and these promises have never panned out. His language around these promises has been changing, but FSD still isn’t living up to expectations.
It’s clearly a complex problem, but Cruise’s shot across Tesla’s – and Waymo’s – bow is a big flex, showing that they consider their autonomous abilities on par with, or better than, their two biggest competitors.
Now we wonder – where will Cruise go next? Maybe Los Angeles, like Waymo recently announced?
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Environment
Podcast: EV/Solar killing bill moves forward, Elon lies about Tesla’s demand, cheaper EVs, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the EV/Solar killing bill moving forward, Elon lying about Tesla’s demand, cheaper EVs coming, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET)
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This is what the future of travel will look like. Circle K opened its first location exclusively for EV charging in Europe. The site features ten ultra-fast EV chargers and a convenience store while you wait.
Circle K opens first EV charging-only site in Europe
The new EV charging hub is located in Gårda, near Gothenburg, Sweden. It’s Circle K’s largest EV charging-only location with ten 400 kW chargers that can recharge from 0 to 80% in around 15 minutes.
Kempower supplied two 600 kW Power Units and ten Single Satellite chargers that can deliver up to 400 kW of power.
With an improved version of Kempower’s Autocharge feature, the system can store your information so that the next time you visit, all you have to do is plug in. The system will recognize your vehicle and bill you automatically.
While you wait, there’s a 1,076 ft² (100 m²) convenience store that offers “a complete retail experience,” offering food, drinks, Wi-Fi, and plenty of seating.
The site expects heavy traffic on Sweden’s E6, with over 10,000 vehicles travelling on the motorway daily.
The new EV charging-only site comes after Circle K opened its largest EV charging hub in Sweden. Located just southwest of Stockholm, the flagship location has 26 fast chargers that can be used with light and heavy-duty vehicles.
Circle K now has over 3,000 branded chargers across Europe and will continue adding to its network as demand for EV charging rises.
With around 17,000 locations globally, the company said it’s “uniquely positioned” to support the transition to electric vehicles.
Will we see Circle K open a location exclusively for EVs in the US? As more electric cars hit the road, more charging options will be needed. A few convenience stores, including 7-Eleven, are already rolling out fast chargers. Through 7Charge, 7-Eleven aims to build “one of the largest and most compatible” EV fast charging networks of any retailer in North America.
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