Hey Guys,

After over $100 Billion spend in autonomous driving, Robo-taxis still seem far far away. Not exactly what we had hoped for as 2023 rolls around soon. Let’s try to take stock of this.

Ford and Volkswagen invested billions into the company and will snap up Argo AI's tech. Even Lyft took a nearly $136 million hit by the failing of Argo AI being shut down about three weeks ago.

Robo-taxis don’t have the same level of hype in 2022, the mood is bearish. Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup that burst on the scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment, is shutting down — its parts being absorbed into its two main backers: Ford and VW, according to people familiar with the matter.

This as Intel’s Mobileye went IPO again. is somehow trading at $30 and a market valuation of $24.16 Billion. Which of course, does not make sense even as one of the few leaders left.

Google’s Waymo One is not giving up by the way. Waymo, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service is making its official debut for all riders in downtown Phoenix. The cars had been available for trusted testers in the downtown area and after millions of miles tested in real life, and in simulation, they are all set for the public.

Ford said it recorded a $2.7 billion non-cash, pretax impairment on its investment in Argo AI, resulting in an $827 million net loss for the third quarter. It’s doubtful GM’s cruise experiment is going well. Aurora Technologies and GM’s Cruise likely have to be acquired or disbanded soon, would be my best guess. Amazon is a likely buyer for Aurora technologies or maybe Apple.

What’s happening is a brutal shakeout among companies trying to monetize a new technology. Money poured into startups during bubbly days before and during the pandemic. While robots have had a great year of adoption in 2022, robo-taxis are spectacularly absent as the tech fails to mature at a decent clip amidst unpredictable humans and so many variables of uncertainty for full-autonomy to be practical.

The sudden shuttering of autonomous vehicle company Argo AI was received poorly and as proof that the industry was hyped in an unrealistic way in recent years. Meanwhile China and the U.S. still have many pilots on-going in the area of self-driving taxis and trucks. It’s too soon to say that Robo-taxis aren’t coming at all.

Google’s Waymo still has the most experience and is crawling along for the long-game. It’s a seductive future even as the tech plods along, a mere shadow of the hype of a few years ago.

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Hey Everyone,

While Lyft is being out-competed against by Uber again in 2022 and its stock seems destined to become a penny stock in 2023, it’s efforts and ideals for a self-driving future are always fun to watch.

Lyft’s president, John Zimmer, previously said a majority of the company’s rides would be in self-driving vehicles by 2021. But as far as executives making promises about self-driving vehicles goes, we are zero for ever, thus far.

Still the Argo-Ford-Lyft partnership is fairly interesting in a land of robotaxi pilots. Ride-hailing giant Lyft and autonomous vehicle technology company Argo AI are now officially offering public robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. This is the second city in which Lyft and Argo are operating a commercial robotaxi service after Miami, which launched in December.

Argo AI is an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs.

As you might expect, Zimmer still believes his company can help bring about revolutionary change to transportation — just on a different timeline than he’d first envisioned.

Lyft’s company is on uncertain ground with new rules that might do away with the contract status of flexible gig workers. The stock is therefore plummeting. The Biden Labor Department released a proposal Tuesday that could make it possible for gig workers to be reclassified as employees, rather than contractors. This is maybe a worst-case scenario for Lyft, that’s a pure-play company, even as Uber has expanded well into Uber Eats and other kinds of delivery.

In 2016, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer predicted most of the company’s rides would be self-driving within five years, a transformation that would largely eliminate the need for costly drivers.

Riders in Austin will have the option of choosing a driverless commute directly in the Lyft app for the same price as a normal Lyft ride, the company said Thursday in a blog post. The app will enable customers to unlock the vehicle’s doors, start the ride and contact customer support. But don’t worry, there are typically two technicians in the front of the car to monitor everything.

Recently I wrote a long op-ed about the shady slowness of the autonomous driving movement. After $100 Billion thrown at the industry, the errors and level of autonomy are really quite shocking.

AI Supremacy

Are Self-Driving Cars a Sham?

As many as 20 Cruise cars blocked several lanes of traffic for two hours. Just another day in the life of immature autonomous vehicles. 2022. Hey Guys, This is A.I. Supremacy. A lot of hype has been generated for a future of autonomous vehicles, robotics and smart cars. Fast forward to the year 2022, and we have Cruise vehicles that stall in the middle …

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4 years ago · 2 likes · Michael Spencer

I’m trying to cover developments in robotics, AI News and autonomous driving among other A.I based topics in this Newsletter. To read the entire piece consider upgrading.

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Motional has their HQ located in the Boston area. Motional is an American autonomous vehicle company founded in March 2020 as a joint venture between automaker Hyundai Motor Group and auto supplier Aptiv.

I’ve been noticing Hyundai has gotten very forward looking of late, and I’ve always been impressed by the GDP per capital innovation quotient of South Korea. The race to robo-taxis is very interesting to me. They are in headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, but Motional also maintains operations in Pittsburgh, Singapore, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

So why do companies like Motional matter? They bridge the present with the future of AVs, EVs and everything in-between. We are talking about a huge TAM, total addressable market.

The winners of this industry of AV integration will likely also become powerful robotics companies. The CEO of Motional is Karl Iagnemma. I find this is a very credible startup, if you can call it that.

Karl is an authority on robotics and autonomous vehicles whose opinion and commentary has been published and broadcast worldwide on Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, and many other media outlets.

As former director of the Robotic Mobility Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his research resulted in more than 150 technical publications, 50 issued or filed patents, and numerous edited volumes, including books on the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge autonomous vehicle competitions. Karl was named one of 2017’s “Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” by Goldman Sachs and designated a member of the 2017 “Recode 100” list of technology influencers.

The Lyft Trial

The Lyft trial is incredible, and yet I was shocked to see how little it is being covered. I’m always following news on Cruise, Tesla and Inte’s Mobileye unit, as well as all the incredible Chinese companies in the field including Baidu’s Apollo program and of course Google’s Waymo.

The partnerships in the auto sector truly are incredible. There are so many variables in the AV industry. If you’ve read my work you know I’m a massive fan of Wayve in this area.

AI Supremacy

Wayve Partners with Microsoft to Scale Autonomous Vehicles

Hey Guys, I follow autonomous driving advances pretty closely as it relates to artificial intelligence at scale. One of the startups that has always been on my radar is London based Wayve.ai. Their AV2.0 technology completely rethinks how to solve self-driving by taking a pure machine learning approach. The result is a next generation AV technology that…

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4 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Michael Spencer

So let’s dive into the heart of the topic.

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