Autonomous Cars With Marc Hoag

Today: Cruise to start driverless testing in California; Caterpillar grows its AV division; Local Motors plans to test its new Ollie 2.0 in Toronto. All this… right now. Driverless Cruise I’ve been a big fan of GM’s Cruise (formerly Cruise Automation) pretty much since ever. But I didn’t agree with their announcement in 2019 that they would release to the world a true driverless car — sans steering wheel, mind — onto the chaotic streets of San Francisco by year’s end. First, I said it was an unlikely goal to achieve, which of course they didn’t. Alternatively, even if they did achieve it… so what? What really matters is not so much the marketing hype of demonstrating to the world that you have an L5-capable vehicle, but rather that consumers are actually using it, like Waymo is doing in Arizona. Now GM has become the fifth company in California to receive from the California Department of Motor Vehicles a driverless testing permit for their Cruise vehicle on the streets of California. But they still aren’t te