The Self-Driving Race Is Fully Back On

One slice of today’s out-of-nowhere AI boom has actually been a long time coming: the rise of the self-driving car. 

After a period of wild hype in the 2010s, followed by disillusionment and a shakeout in the early 2020s, the race to make your car autonomous is fully back on, baby. For those that stuck it out, like Tesla and Waymo, the mission never really ended. Across the board, though, the shift is undeniable.

After selling its self-driving unit years ago, Uber is back in the game and striking deals with, well, basically everyone. Waymo’s driverless Jaguars have become a fixture in places like San Francisco, and its service is expanding faster than ever. Testing is underway in New York, even. 

And now, Nvidia, the most valuable public company on the planet, is going bigger into autonomous driving than ever before. This week, the chip maker announced AGX Hyperion 10, a standardized backbone for self-driving cars that features computers, sensors, an operating system and even the autonomy software, if you want. The idea being is that car companies and AV software developers can work with a common “chassis” to speed up development of AI-driven vehicles. 

Lucid Motors, too, said it would use Nvidia’s full-stack AV solution to give its upcoming midsize car Level 4 self-driving capability. 

On this week’s Plugged-In Podcast, Patrick George and I break down how Nvidia and its partners are taking the fight to Waymo and Tesla. Who knows if it’ll work? At the very least, the next few years will be very interesting. 

We also recap the biggest news from the Japan Mobility Show, namely Toyota’s electric Corolla concept. And we debate Slate Auto’s newly announced plan to service its trucks by leveraging local mom-and-pop repair shops. 

Catch our show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you consume podcasts. 

And let us know: What do you want us to talk about next? Which guests should we have on the show?

Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com