Autonomous driving is hard

This week, we observe how lofty ambitions are crushed against the
jagged rocks of reality: Lyft is selling Level 5, its
self-driving car business, to Toyota, just a few months after
Uber announced it would offload its autonomous vehicle lab to
Aurora.


Where does this leave the autonomous car dream?


According to Sebastian, the reasons are likely financial, rather
than technological: you can only be involved one loss-making,
hyped-up enterprise at a time, and ride-hailing is yet to make
any money. Uber lost $6.77 billion in 2020, while Lyft was in the
red to the tune of $1.8 billion.


So, what happened at Lyft? The company is selling its
self-driving business to Toyota, where it will become part of
'Woven Planet Holdings' – a new division dedicated to autonomous
vehicles and smart city tech. In exchange, Toyota is set to pay
$550m, which could offset Lyft’s losses for a quarter or two.


The best thing about Woven Planet Holdings is the Woven City – a
miniature smart city built up with the latest technologies in
mind, a polygon for innovation in urban planning that will start
with 360 residents, and gradually expand to 2,000.


Such innovation includesthree types of roads “interwoven with
each other on the ground level, one dedicated to automated
driving, one to pedestrians, and one to pedestrians with personal
mobility vehicles.”


Besides Toyota, the big players to watch in the autonomous
driving space – the ones currently acquiring smaller competitors
– are GM-backed Cruise, proudly independent Aurora, Google’s
Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, and potentially, Apple.
But Apple moves in mysterious ways.


In related news, the UK is expected to permit a limited type of
autonomy on the country’s roads, looking specifically at
Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) – which have been available
in production vehicles for years.


This goes to show that even if car manufacturers are willing and
able, it is ultimately up to the state to decide just when
autonomous cars will appear on a road near you.


We also cover: Hangovers! HTC! Bioshocking it!


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