There is a lengthy article about autonomous driving and the...

There is a lengthy article about autonomous driving and the current state of retrenchment and refocus in the industry today in the FT, there is an awful lot still to do, and thus plenty of scope for new entrants.

Self-driving industry takes to the highway after robotaxi failure

A couple of extracts

"Back then, it made sense that autonomous driving was just a research project. Eleven years on, however, the industry still has little idea what to do with the technology, despite some big advances over the past decade. As the much-hyped, seven-year quest to develop a driverless Uber service has suffered several setbacks, the appetite is now switching beyond robotaxis in search of more profitable avenues.

The sector is experiencing “autonomous disillusionment”, says Prescott Watson, principal at Maniv Mobility, an early-stage venture capital firm. Now, “the pitch is, ‘robotaxis are a pipe dream’, but let’s take this technology to do something more lucrative,” he adds.Investors are still interested in autonomy but the focus has shifted towards practical services such as grocery delivery, automated warehouse robots, and autonomous functions restricted to highways."

" The concept of highway-only autonomy is currently capturing the attention of the industry. Instead of trying to solve the myriad challenges of go-anywhere-robotaxis, engineers could focus on making it work on just highways to begin with.Autonomous vehicle start-ups see promise in America’s trucking sector — an $800bn market handicapped by driver shortages and rules that limit working shifts to 11 hours. McKinsey, the consultancy, has projected that “full autonomy” will not be commercially ready for trucks until 2027, but the likes of TuSimple, Plus.ai, Ike, Kodiak Robotics and Embark want to accelerate that timeline by narrowing their focus to monotonous stretches of road."

" The other big area for highway-only autonomy is for passenger cars. Just a few years ago, this idea made little economic sense: In 2014, the cost of laser-powered sensors known as “lidar” — which most experts see as critical for developing safe autonomous vehicles — were $75,000 apiece. Self-driving prototypes were often equipped with several of them, placing them well beyond the reach of even luxury buyers.But costs have since collapsed, with some lidar groups including Velodyne, Aeva and Luminar partnering with carmakers to build units at scale for less than $1,000 each."