Welcome to the Ride AI Newsletter, your weekly digest of important events and new developments at the intersection of technology and transportation.

Here’s What You Need to Know Today

GM’s self-driving unit Cruise is preparing to resume operations following a safety recall last year, considering Houston and Dallas as candidates for its autonomous taxi service. GM’s president Mark Reuss acknowledged the difficult road ahead for restoring public trust. The company says it is working carefully with Texas officials to ensure a safe return to operations. No launch date is set yet.

Chinese AV startup Haomo raised $14M in a series B funding round, continuing to grow despite the overall investment cooldown for autonomous tech companies in China. Haomo supplies advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for both passenger cars and logistics vehicles, and some of the new funding will provide cleaning and security robots for the Wuhou district of Chengdu.

Nuro, a delivery robot manufacturer, is getting a boost from a new partnership with Arm, taking advantage of the chip maker’s Automotive Enhanced technology. It’s expected to fast-track production plans and enhance capabilities of Nuro’s fully autonomous Driver vehicle, the third generation of which is currently in development.

Speaking of delivery bots: Tiny sidewalk robots will soon be used to transport food for Uber Eats in Japan. The company announced a joint venture with Mitsubishi Electric and robotics specialist Cartken, with Japan selected as a prime market due to the country’s aging population and shrinking workforce.

Alternative fuels in California face a setback as Shell closes hydrogen refueling stations across the state, after discontinuing the buildout of its hydrogen network in 2023. Shell is still committed to hydrogen fuel for hard-to-electrify sectors and will continue to operate re-fueling stations for heavy-duty transport vehicles.

The US Air Force has given their stamp of approval to autonomous aircraft in California. San Francisco-based Xwing manufactures fully self-piloted cargo planes, which successfully flew 2,800 miles (4,500 km) between civilian and military airports during a two-week trial period.

Just how “smart” is your city? IESE’s Cities in Motion Index studied 183 cities around the globe and ranked them based on technology, urban planning, and transportation, in addition to a wide range of social and economic factors. Europe and North America dominated the top ten with the three highest scores going to London, New York, and Paris.

For more reading in this area check out this excellent piece from the Scientific American, which discusses the negative results from approaching city planning purely as an engineering problem, rather than focusing on connecting people with each other and the land. From the article:

Design-based, community-scaled solutions are paramount because we now must grow within our existing places rather than sprawl, which has ruined too much land, generated too many greenhouse gas emissions and wasted too much time as we drive for every simple thing. The city and all its neighborhoods must get better with more people in them.

ArcBest unveiled a new line of autonomous electric forklifts, which can also be operated in manual or remote modes. The remote mode is crucial for this type of automation, allowing a single human driver to remotely oversee a fleet of lift trucks and step in if one gets confused.

It’s official: Every major western automaker is now using Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS). Stellantis —known for brands like Jeep and Chrysler— was the last holdout to cave, making adapters available to current customers and building vehicles with NACS hardware starting in 2025.

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