Self-Driving Truck Company Aurora Launches Pilot With Uber Freight

Aurora said it began autonomously transporting loads for Uber Freight customers between Dallas and Houston last week. The company plans to launch its commercial autonomous trucking business by the end of 2023, starting in Texas. Uber is an investor in Aurora after the self-driving company bought Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit ATG last year and Uber acquired a 26% ownership interest in Aurora. Uber Freight is a platform that acts as a middleman in connecting shippers who need goods hauled with available truck drivers, oftentimes independent contractors in a highly fragmented…

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Samsung Is Using This Silicon Valley Startup’s Tech in Its Self-Driving Cars

Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, has turned to a comparatively tiny Silicon Valley startup to help it test, develop, and one day even deploy commercial fleets of self-driving taxis. The collaboration is a boon for Renovo Auto, a startup that has developed an operating system of sorts that integrates and manages all the software needed for a commercial fleet of shared autonomous vehicles. Renovo Auto’s operating system works similar to Google’s Android or, even AmazonWeb Services’ on-demand cloud computing platform. The company isn’t developing the AI algorithms that help the…

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Lyft Partners nuTonomy to Test Self-Driving Cars in Boston

Uber rival Lyft said Tuesday it would begin testing autonomous ridesharing in Boston under a partnership with the technology startup nuTonomy. Under the partnership, nuTonomy and Lyft will collaborate to gain insights into “all aspects of ensuring a passenger’s comfort and safety” in self-driving vehicles, a joint statement said. Lyft’s move follows a similar effort by Uber, which has been using autonomous vehicles in a test program in some US cities. “At Lyft, we imagine a world where car ownership is optional and cities are designed for people instead of…

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