‍

What You Need to Know Today

Nvidia went all in on autonomous vehicles and robotics at CES. In addition to announcing partnerships with major automakers like Toyota, the chip giant unveiled Cosmos - a new platform that CEO Jensen Huang called the “ChatGPT moment” for robotics. The key innovation here is using generative AI to create synthetic data and simulate billions of driving scenarios, potentially supercharging AV development by reducing dependence on real-world testing.

Uber said it will be among the first to use Cosmos for its AV efforts. Is the ridehail giant going to take another run at developing an L4 driver? More likely it’s leveraging Nvidia’s tech to gather and share data with its growing list of AV partners, including Serve, Waymo, and Aurora.

How two Tesla engineers convinced Elon Musk to replace 300,000 lines of code with an AI model.

Uber spinout Serve Robotics raised $80M via direct stock offering to grow its network of sidewalk delivery bots.

NHTSA opened a probe into Tesla over crashes related to the automaker’s remote parking feature.

Vay is expanding its driverless car-sharing fleet to 100 vehicles in Las Vegas.

May Mobility and Technobus unveiled a new self-driving 30-passenger minibus.

Aurora’s general counsel is departing at the same time that Travis Kalanick is resigning from the board. Amid the personnel shakeup, Aurora also announced a strategic partnership with Nvidia and Continental to accelerate AV truck deployment.

2024 came and went, and still there is no sign of the next-gen CarPlay that Apple first announced in 2022.

Goodyear’s new smart tires can detect ice and rain to trigger AEB when road conditions become dangerous.

John Deere introduced a whole bunch of new autonomous heavy-duty machinery for agriculture, construction, landscaping.

Why Waymo is a big improvement over Uber/Lyft for blind people.

Zeekr says it will likely begin delivering Waymo’s next-generation RT robotaxi this year.

Aftermarket equipment installations are rendering GM’s SuperCruise ADAS inoperative.

Robotaxi hijinks: A Waymo customer in Phoenix nearly missed his flight when his taxi got stuck going in circles around a roundabout—such foibles are probably preferable to the kinds of mistakes human drivers are prone to making; what happens you try to take over a Waymo; headline from the future: a self-driving fridge gets dinged by a self-driving taxi.

Garmin released a radar unit for motorbikes.

Tesla’s global deliveries fell in 2024 for the first time in a decade. It looks like Musk’s self-driving crusade will be a sink or swim moment for the company.

Trucks VC launched a new $70M fund to invest in mobility startups.

‍