Here’s the annual year in review, with the top 10 1/2 stories of the year in self-driving cars, robotaxis and more. This year, since there were many interesting video backgrounds to use, it is available as a video.
The video contains indexes so you can easily seek to the different stories in the top 10.
10.5 Electrification
It’s not robocars, but the big surge in electric cars and the infrastructure bill will be a benefit to robocars which are mostly designed on EV platforms.
10: Cruise opens Kimono, goes unmanned
We finally got to see more of what goes on inside a Cruise vehicle, and they started early robotaxi deployments with no safety driver — covered more at #3 in the countdown. But the recent firing of the CEO is not a good sign.
9: Tons of new LIDARs and radars
Sensors keep getting better and better. We’re seeing new LIDARs and radars with amazing resolution, and scores of companies are working to make it all cheaper. One reason many were scared of LIDAR is that in the beginning, it was very expensive. But nothing made of electronics stays expensive for long. Instead, metaphorical Moore’s law makes everything better and cheaper every day.
8: Bounce back from pandemic for smart mobility
The pandemic was the big story of both 2020 and 2021. It hurt all areas of transportation, but they are starting to bounce back, including smart mobility. Oddly, Omicron offers a way out of the pandemic which will see things go full speed ahead.
7: Appl
AAPL
AAPL
The Apple car has been on-again/off-again with defections and changes of plans. It looks like their back now, and their cars are busy roaming the streets. Apple never releases any details, but this story outlines what sort of car Apple would be likely to make.
6: Waymo
Waymo is the leader and always makes a lot of the news. They had ups and downs, from a public screw-up put on YouTube (to be fair, because they are one of the few companies that will let random members of the public use their cars and make videos) to the departure of their CEO. But see them again at #3 in the countdown.
5: Starship and Alibaba deliveries
Delivery robots are soaring. Starship (Disclaimer, I am a stockholder) announced 2 million real commercial deliveries, and Alibaba announced 1 million packages delivered (in larger vehicles.) Scores of companies are getting in on the game, from the sidewalk to the bike lane to the low-speed road vehicle. (Today uDelv announced their van will operate with MobilEye’s self-drive system.)
4: Tesla
Tesla’s FSD beta is still a very poor self-driving car — I will have a better review of that coming soon, but it doesn’t stop Tesla from dominating the headlines.
3: San Francisco
While Cruise and Waymo already made the list, their competition in San Francisco is one of the most important stories. Cruise finally started test operations there with employees, Waymo is doing it for a limited subset of the public with their Jaguars.
2: Move to trucking
There wasn’t a specific big story here but the overall boom in self-driving trucks was the not-so-stealth big event. While people debated the success of robotaxis vs. ADAS, the commercial value of trucks became clear. Players like TuSimple and Aurora went public with near dekaunicorn valuations, with a SPAC planned for Plus.AI. Several players completed test runs on public highways with no safety driver on board, including most recently tuSimple from Phoenix to Tucson.
1: Roboataxis deploy in China
Waymo and Cruise may have generated the robotaxi excitement in the west, but 3 different Chinese companies started deploying services in China with no safety driver or limited safety driver involvement, including AutoX, Baidu Apollo and WeRide. In addition, Waymo decided to use a new robotaxi vehicle platform from Chinese manufacturer Geely/Zeekr
In 2022 we can expect more exciting news. Tesla won’t deliver on their promise of real FSD, but that won’t stop them making plenty of news. We’ll see more and larger robotaxi deployments and more news from China. An exciting ride is ahead.
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