Waymo has sharply increased its lobbying spending as it seeks to persuade US regulators to clear a path for fully autonomous taxi services, intensifying its battle with rival Uber over the future of robotaxis.

The Alphabet-owned company spent more than $1 million between April and June on lobbying the federal government, more than double its outlay a year earlier, according to filings. That put Waymo’s spending close to Uber’s and well ahead of rivals including Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla.

The rise in lobbying comes as Waymo and Uber push competing visions for the future of ride-hailing. Waymo wants a faster route to fully driverless commercial services, while Uber is advocating a staggered rollout in which robotaxis operate alongside human drivers.

Read full article

Comments

© Alex Kent, Bloomberg

Waymo built its own chip for its robotaxis, cutting its reliance on Nvidia.

The article Waymo builds its own chip for its robotaxis, cutting its reliance on Nvidia appeared first on The Decoder.

Waymo has revealed new technical details about the onboard computing system that powers its autonomous driving technology, including a purpose-built 5 nm ASIC delivering more than 1,000 TOPS of machine learning performance. The company says its latest compute architecture is designed to provide millisecond-level response times while operating under the vibration, temperature extremes and other […]

China is the country most prepared for self-driving cars, according to a new report. The new study by the B2B car company eCarsTrade analyzed robotaxi deployment, road infrastructure, legal frameworks, and public sentiment across 15 countries to see which nations are actually putting driverless vehicles on the road. Driven by massive robotaxi deployment, nearuniversal 5G […]