Robot cars roll onto S. F. streets
City’s gnarly traffic puts driverless vehicles to test
Cars with no drivers behind the wheel — not even backup drivers — are now on the streets of San Francisco. General Motors subsidiary Cruise said Wednesday it is testing up to five truly driverless cars in its hometown, marking a milestone in its development of robot cars.
“You’re seeing fully driverless technology move out of the R& D phase and into the beginning of the journey to be a full commercial product,” said Cruise
CEO Dan Ammann. He was formerly president of General Motors, which is Cruise’s majority owner.
Cruise, which got a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles in October for driverless testing, is not the first to deploy cars without drivers on public roads.
Rival Waymo, an offshoot of Google parent Alphabet, operates autonomous cars in Arizona with no backup operators aboard, Nuro deploys driverless delivery vehicles in Mountain View, and several international companies also do so in various cities.
Amazon’s Zoox and China’s AutoX have permits for no driver testing in California. Zoox has not discussed its test plans. AutoX
is not testing in California, but has 25 nodriver cars operating in Shenzhen. Motional, the Boston company that partners with Lyft to offer robot taxi rides in Las Vegas, will test nodriver cars on Nevada roads early next year, although the paid rides will still have operators present.
San Francisco presents particularly gnarly traffic conditions, however.
Cruise’s nodriver cars have begun operating in the Sunset District and will later expand to other neighborhoods, the company said. It also tests scores of driverless cars with safety drivers behind the wheel throughout San Francisco. Even the nodriver cars will have drivers aboard initially — just not behind the wheel.
“We recognize this is both a trust race as well as a tech race,” Cruise spokesman Milin Mehta said in an email. “Given that, during the beginning of our use of this permit, we will maintain a safety operator in the passenger seat. The safety operator has the ability to bring the vehicle to a stop in the event of an emergency, but does not have access to standard driver controls. Eventually, this safety operator will be fully removed.”
Ammann described his ride in one of the white and orange nodriver Chevy Bolts as “wildly boring” — wild to think about what was happening, but boring because nothing extraordinary happened.
The news is “a small and humble step towards a much bigger goal,” Ammann said. “Progress will be much more visible and tangible from here.”
Cruise, which has been testing for five years and logged about 2 million miles in San Francisco, hopes to offer robot taxi rides and robot deliveries for the public soon but didn’t give any timetable. It recently partnered with retail giant Walmart for deliveries.
“San Francisco is a challenging environment,” said Mike Ramsey, automotive analyst with Gartner. “Cruise probably knows this isn’t going to go flawlessly, but that’s part of the deal. We’re finally moving past this interminable R& D stage and closer to something like commercialization.”
Waymo is already offering the public paid rides in its completely driverless cars in
Arizona. It received a permit to operate driverless vehicles in California two years ago, but has not yet done so. The state’s lack of guidelines for commercial robot rides were one impediment, it said. That has now been remedied with a 130page report from California regulators issued in October.
“I would not necessarily call this a breakthrough,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst with market research firm Guidehouse Insights. “Cruise is not the first to go down this path; a number of companies around the world are doing
this.”
He predicts the service won’t be available to the public until late next year at the earliest. “I wouldn’t expect significant volumes ( of paid rides) until 2022,” he said.
Ramsey thinks commercial rides in nodriver robot cars from a variety of companies will be available in about 18 months in a handful of cities, including in California.
“I think by mid2022, it won’t be that hard to get an autonomous cab,” he said. “It won’t be everywhere, though.”
In January, Cruise held a
splashy event in San Francisco to unveil a nextgeneration vehicle called the Cruise Origin, from which all driver machinery has been removed. Sensors are integrated into the boxy, allelectric vehicle, which can hold up to six passengers. The company has not said when the Origin might be ready for prime time or where it stands in getting permission from federal regulators.