Geely Holding's premium electric vehicle (EV) brand, ZEEKR, announced via its WeChat the self-driving all-electric vehicle model it co-developed with Waymo made its official debut on Nov. 17 in Los Angeles, the U.S.

The cooperative model is built on the basis of the ZEEKR M-Vision, which will be prepared for volume production in 2024, the EV maker said.

The latest model premiere marks a significant advancement for the cooperation ZEEKR and Waymo formed in December 2021. Per the agreement, both parties would collaborate on the development of a new battery-electric vehicle (BEV) for deployment in the Waymo One autonomous ride-hailing fleet in the U.S. The model rides on ZEEKR's SEA-M architecture.

ZEEKR claimed the SEA-M as the world's first BEV architecture specifically designed for self-driving mobility service, boasting an exceptional expansibility available for a wide wheelbase range of 2,700mm to 3,300mm and diverse seating arrangements. The architecture has access to Level 4 and higher levels of autonomous driving systems, and is compatible with various autonomous driving technology solutions.

The ZEEKR M-Vision is jointly designed by ZEEKR's R&D facility, namely CEVT (China Europe Vehicle Technology Centre) in Gothenburg, Sweden, and an R&D team from China. It will have two driving solutions, under which a steering wheel and the steering-wheel-free design will be offered, respectively.

The ZEEKR M-Vision features an advent-garde capsule-style front design and power sliding doors that make passengers easily get into and out of the vehicle.

ZEEKR said the ZEEKR M-Vision features a super-long designed service life of 5 years/500,000 kilometers, which indicates 16 hours of non-stop driving per day.

Volkswagen Delays Key Trinity Project which may delay Level 4 consumer AV.

Volkswagen Group new CEO Oliver Blume plans to push back the automaker's key Trinity flagship EV project from 2026 toward the end of the decade because new software for the project won’t be ready in time. ....

... VW software unit Cariad “will gain some time” to work on a new cross-brand platform and architecture, dubbed SSP, Cariad’s Chief Executive Dirk Hilgenberg Hilgenberg said in an internal letter to employees seen by Bloomberg.

The comments suggest Volkswagen is taking a cautionary path in developing the SSP architecture, which is also supposed to enable Level 4 autonomous driving.

"Waymo's lost ~$11 bil cumulatively and Cruise ~$7 bil
....
Uber operates at ~~100,000 times the commercial trip scale of Waymo & Cruise."

CV3 has been in the hands of potential customers for evaluation for only 4-5 months and is the first announced design win for Ambarella's SoC, unveiled back in January of 2022 at CES.

Competitive SoCs from Qualcomm and Mobileye also debuted at CES 2022.

"The budding relationship soured as Ford and VW grew wary that Amazon would divert Argo’s talent and attention, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing internal deliberations. The companies also struggled to come up with a governance structure for how they would share control of Argo. Additionally, the retail giant was turned off by the high cost of Argo’s technology, one of the people said."

"Argo and Amazon first began working together with a pilot project in Miami in 2019. A test fleet of Ford Fusion hybrids outfitted with Argo’s self-driving system ran predetermined routes from an Amazon warehouse to final destinations — dry runs of so-called last-mile delivery. No packages were actually delivered, but Amazon liked what it saw, said the people familiar with Amazon’s involvement.

By early this year, there was so much optimism that Amazon would do a deal with Argo that the self-driving firm staffed up to work on outfitting the Rivian vans with autonomous technology, the people said. Argo hired about 150 people to work on the Amazon business, bringing its global workforce to more than 2,000.

The plan called for Amazon to steadily increase its investment in Argo as the partnership achieved major milestones, the people said."
But by spring, Ford and VW still hadn’t agreed to terms on sharing Argo with Amazon. Ford would eventually acquiesce. VW remained wary that Amazon — with a reputation for dominating partnerships — would draw talent and resources away from the German automaker’s ambitious self-driving strategy, according to the people. "

"There was one glimmer of hope. VW considered an 11th-hour bailout of Argo this fall when Ford determined it would no longer fund the self-driving firm, the people said. VW looked at covering Ford’s investment in Argo and taking it over completely. Instead, VW invested $2.3 billion to set up an autonomous driving joint venture with China’s Horizon Robotics."

Nvidia 2023 CES autonomous presentation Jan 3

Gill Pratt, chief scientist, Toyota Motor Corp. and CEO, Toyota Research Institute, noted, “No one really knows” when fully automated vehicles will reach production.

"Apple is now planning a less-ambitious design that will include a steering wheel and pedals for driving around town, while fully autonomous driving will be done only on the highway, according to the anonymous sources."

"In a significant shift for the project, the company is now planning a less-ambitious design that will include a steering wheel and pedals and only support full autonomous capabilities on highways, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private."

"The heart of Apple’s technology is a powerful onboard computer system — codenamed Denali after the tallest mountain peak in North America — and a custom array of sensors. The processor’s performance is equal to about four of Apple’s highest-end Mac chips combined and is being developed by the company’s silicon engineering group. The chip has reached an advanced state and is considered nearly production-ready, though Apple may scale it down before the car’s launch to lower costs.

In addition to the onboard hardware, the system has a cloud-based component for some artificial-intelligence processing. Apple is relying on Amazon Web Services for hosting, costing the iPhone maker about $125 million per year. But that’s just a sliver of the roughly $1 billion the company is spending on the car project annually.

Apple hasn’t yet settled on a design for its car and the vehicle is considered to be in the “pre-prototype” stage. The company is aiming to ready the design by next year and have the features set by the end of 2024. It then plans to put the car through extensive testing in 2025."

www bnnbloomberg ca

Japan approves use of highly autonomous 'level-4' self-driving vehicles from April 2023.

Japan decided Tuesday to allow highly autonomous “level-4” self-driving vehicles to be used for transit and delivery services from April 2023.

Private cars will not be subject to the changes next year, with limited adoption of the automated vehicles intended to lead to the technology’s use in unmanned bus services in regions with falling populations and in self-driving delivery robots.

Self-driving automation is classified into five levels starting at level-1, which allows either steering, brake or acceleration support.

At level-4, set to be permitted from April 1, a vehicle is considered able to conduct driving tasks without human intervention within a limited area, while a level-5 vehicle can drive itself anywhere under all conditions.

Private vehicles classified as level-3 are already available, with Honda Motor’s revamped Legend sedan becoming the world’s first to reach the market in March 2021. Under certain conditions, including in congested traffic and on expressways, the car can operate itself while the driver engages in other activities.

Companies running transit services with level-4 automation will need permission from prefectural public safety commissions.

They will also be required to install long-distance surveillance systems for regular vehicle checks, and cybersecurity measures to ensure an unauthorized third party cannot take control of them.

In a push for greater use of automated vehicles, the Japanese government has set a target for more than 40 areas nationwide to use level-4 automated transit systems by fiscal 2025.

Alliance for Automotive Innovation today released Ready to Launch: Autonomous Vehicles in the U.S., a new report surveying autonomous vehicle (AV) activity in the U.S. during the first half of 2022.

Among the findings

84 AV companies in 120 cities across 30 states today – includes 69 distinct companies with physical facilities and U.S. employees.

40 AV companies testing or transporting passengers or freight.

Nearly 170 on-road autonomous technology programs (testing and commercially operational).