Autonomous Vehicles

City officials said Thursday that they would begin to permit operators to test drive autonomous autos on New York City streets, in an announcement that divided street safety advocates.

Layoffs and other workforce reductions have marked auto industry headlines in recent months, despite increased vehicle sales last year and even more forecasted growth in 2024.

A frequent criticism by San Francisco officials as driverless robotaxis became common on city streets has been that California's laws and regulations have been slow to catch up to the new reality.

The company has state approval to expand use of its driverless taxis outside San Francisco but caution and permitting are keeping it off freeways and away from San Francisco International Airport for now.

The shuttle, which operated in downtown, was taken out of service after a crash Nov. 4. A review determined human error prompted it to move into the path of another bus. Test runs restarted Tuesday.

The California Public Utilities Commission recently stated in a disposition letter that Waymo's driverless taxis can begin picking up fared passengers immediately in certain areas in the state.

San Mateo County, Calif., is pushing back on a proposal to bring driverless taxis to the peninsula’s streets and highways, doing so first via a letter sent recently to regulators.

Baggage and cargo movement at airports is emerging as another use case for autonomous vehicle technology, as airlines and airports eye these applications.

The company leading the robotaxi race wants to expand driverless ride-hailing to Los Angeles and 22 Bay Area cities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties — even as San Francisco is suing to rein in its expansion.

In October, robotaxis suffered a major setback when a fatal accident in San Francisco involving a vehicle belonging to Cruise, one of the leading robotaxi companies, cast a long shadow over the technology’s future.

The city of Tucson is trying to reclaim more than $100,000 in job-related incentives from self-driving truck developer TuSimple, after the company shut down operations at a major facility on the city's southeast side.

While some cities and companies are recoiling from the risks posed by autonomous driving technology, Arlington is picking up some of the slack with its own program in the downtown area.

Autonomous vehicles, which can drive themselves at least part of the time, are making news in urban areas, such as San Francisco, where extensive tests of the technology are underway.

Fully independent vehicles remain far from everyday options, as tech companies and automakers struggle to perfect the technology. Advocates believe the technology could one day be safer than riding with human drivers.

Your car’s safety technology takes you into account. But a lot of that technology helps car companies collect data about you. Researchers are working on closing the gap between safety and privacy.

Too often, urban technology doesn’t scale across cities because it’s simply not ready for prime time, experts argued at the recent Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo in National Harbor, Md.

Autonomous vehicles are causing outrage in some California cities, putting Gov. Gavin Newsom in conflict with many fellow Democrats calling for more oversight of the robotic cars on public roads.

General Motors Co. says it'll pause production of its autonomous Cruise Origin vehicles at the Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center after Cruise LLC last month suspended its U.S. driverless operations.