Elon Musk promised the June Austin Robotaxi would operate "unsupervised." New disclosures suggest that won't happen, but what will?

The cars don't come home, they are owned by their maker, and it's all over-the-air software updates for all robotaxi recalls

There's 50 times the energy in a big-semi truck, so this is a big deal

Uber would love for users to come to them, as they do today, seeking a ride, and match them up with a suitable robotaxi from a variety of fleets.

Robotaxis are what you do first, but eventually people want private cars too. Using insights from working for and studying these companies, here are some details.

That's much better than current FSD, but much worse than humans or Waymo. They revealed a number of other interesting details

Tesla showed a Robovan with the CyberCab but said little. Here's how self-driving vans could be the future of public transit

The regulations for robotaxis in China are much stricter than most of the US. Here are some details, plus a report on rides in both Chinese and US robotaxis

After Mark Rober's video on Tesla vs. a LIDAR car, somebody tries to replicate the test on FSD instead of Autopilot, as Rober should have. One FSD works, another fails.

Mark Rober's tests were pretty artificial and examined Tesla's obsolete driver-assist system, not its prototype self-driving system.

It took a while, but Waymo is now servicing its HQ and the place it was born. I worked there 13 years ago and have seen it grow up.

With Waymo up to 200,000/week, total rides are now well over a million a month. The robotaxi is here. But people mistake it for Uber because it looks like that today.

We look at Musk's very specific words from the earnings call, and what they might translate to in Austin to make a service when the software's not yet ready

Tesla is "cheap and everywhere first, they hope for safe." Waymo is "Safe first, then expand and lower costs." MobilEye thinks there is a zig-zag through the middle

In order to compare the two, it's important to figure out just how to judge the quality of a self-driving system.

The claim of the vehicles driving around, carrying passengers with no driver behind the wheel by June borders on ridiculous. The numbers just don't back it up

It doesn't matter what Musk really meant with this salute. Robotaxis are exclusively a product for large urban areas, and that population largely didn't like it at all.

The competition to win in self-driving saw setbacks in 2024, but things were still going strong at CES. Here's a summary of some transportation stories from CES

I made a video version of my 2024 countdown of self-driving stories...

It was a year of tumult, with success and major failures. Let's count down the top self-driving stories of 2024