A Cruise disaster deflates the robotaxi hype once again
Since March 2018, when an Uber test vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona, there’s been a notable chill on the future of self-driving vehicles. Even Elon Musk’s claim that Tesla would have a million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020 wasn’t enough to really move the needle — probably because most people knew it was complete bullshit the moment it escaped his lips.
But over the past year or so, there’s been a push to bring back some of that hype and have it surround Google’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise divisions. They’ve been broadening the scope of their supposed robotaxi services in San Francisco and slowly expanding them to a number of other cities around the United States. The suggestion was that their services had moved beyond the “move fast and break things” ethos exemplified by Uber and Tesla. Instead, they claimed to take their time, play it safe, and that the strategy was reaping dividends. Autonomous vehicles had arrived, or at least were on the cusp of it.