Autonomous Vehicles

The university's Depot Campus is working with Promesa Capital LLC on a facility that car or startup companies could rent out for research, testing and developing autonomous vehicle technologies.

General Motors Co. is deploying manual, mapping examples of the self-driving vehicles in two cities. The company plans to progress this fall to supervised testing in Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

The state Legislature may consider requiring companies like Aurora, Cruise and Waymo to notify the Department of Motor Vehicles when human drivers step out. Proposed bills could be brought forward during the upcoming session.

Concerned with problems ahead as companies ditch drivers for autonomous vehicles, Texas lawmakers are aiming at a light touch — but new requirements — for companies behind driverless tech.

Several new projects in Michigan, California and Florida explore the use of small, electric, autonomous vehicles operating alongside, or within existing, transit services. Public-private partnerships are key to their success, an official said.

A partnership between the ride-sharing and autonomous car companies will bring self-driving cars to the state capitals in Georgia and Texas sometime in 2025. Waymo already offers rides in self-driving cars in California and Arizona.

A cross-sector partnership has helped pave the way for electric AV shuttles to start rolling off the assembly line in Florida by the middle of 2026, meeting Buy America requirements.

A report assessed two North Carolina projects piloting low-speed autonomous shuttles, stood up by partners including the state Department of Transportation. It found the vehicles still have significant limitations.

The companies are expected to launch the service next year with Chevrolet Bolt autonomous vehicles, they said Thursday. Their partnership follows several months of focus by GM on relaunching Cruise and rethinking its safety strategy.

East Lansing-based ADASTEC will bring the vehicle to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore within the week, then program and test it with a safety driver. Lakeshore tours on the bus will be available starting in mid-August.

Tulsa Innovation Labs has received a U.S. Economic Development Administration grant to develop an innovation hub that will look at ramping up advanced manufacturing for autonomous systems, from agriculture to transportation.

Effective this month, new legislation will allow for self-driving cars to hit Kentucky roads and be regulated by state government, but some say it will be a while before people see the vehicles in public.

SouthWest Transit, which serves three of the city’s suburbs, will debut the area’s first autonomous vehicles this fall in Eden Prairie. For now, the service will operate with human drivers on board.

The autonomous driving unit has hired Marc Whitten, a former Amazon executive and founding engineer at Xbox, as its next CEO as it tries to get back on track after halting services amid scrutiny over safety practices.

The California Public Utilities Commission has upheld its March decision to approve Waymo's expansion from San Francisco to San Mateo County and Los Angeles over protests from local officials.

A business group backed by robot-taxi companies is celebrating the demise of a proposed California law that would have let cities regulate the autonomous vehicles and fine them for breaking traffic laws.

The Autonomous Robotic Pickup Platform, a project launching next week in Detroit’s Transportation Innovation Zone, will start by testing small sidewalk delivery bots to collect food waste for compost.

After previously resuming operations in Dallas, the company’s autonomous cars will resume operations in Houston this week. Plans are to shift to autonomous driving with a driver present sometime in coming weeks.