Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On August 6, General Motors' Cruise and Alphabet's Waymo both deployed a large number of self-driving cars in San Francisco to test the technology, but the service has not yet won the approval of the local government and residents. Local officials say the technology of self-driving cars is indeed amazing, and they may also be safer than human drivers in the future. However, the industry has not yet given convincing evidence.

The following is a summary of the full text:

Residents of San Francisco seem to have embraced new things such as computers, the Internet and mobile phones earlier than the rest of the world. However, they are full of doubts about the future of self-driving cars.

All of a sudden, Cruise and Waymo driverless cars seem to be everywhere. Many emergency workers complained that the cars were in the way, while pedestrians exposed their antics on social media. An anti-self-driving group even placed orange traffic cones on the bonnets of these vehicles to confuse the sensors in the cars.

The reaction from San Francisco residents suggests that Cruise, which is majority owned by General Motors, and Waymo, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, face huge challenges in promoting self-driving cars. Both companies have invested billions of dollars in driverless cars in the hope that they will become bigger businesses in the future, but it is clear that they need to win local hearts and minds first.

San Francisco has conducted numerous self-driving car tests, and some residents have even become regular users of the self-driving taxi service. Now, Cruise and Waymo hope to provide ride-hailing services that can compete with Lyft and Uber. If the two companies get their wish, San Francisco will be one of the first large urban experiments to use self-driving cars for transportation.

The California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees passenger transport, is scheduled to vote this month on whether to allow Cruise to expand its business in San Francisco and whether to allow Cruise and Waymo to charge for self-driving rides. The vote has been postponed twice and the agency will hold hearings next week to hear the companies' responses to a range of safety issues.

"We think the technology of self-driving cars is really amazing, and we believe they will be safer than human drivers in the future," said Jeffrey Tumlin, director of transportation for the San Francisco Department of Transportation. "but so far, the industry has not proved that."

Cruise and Waymo are fighting back. Executives at both companies have begun to show their technology to the public and government officials in a more urgent manner, and come up with what they say is data that shows their car safety advantages.

Kyle Vogt, chief executive of Cruise, said more people would be hurt if officials slowed down the promotion of self-driving cars. He also quoted company data as saying that the increase in self-driving cars is closely related to the reduction in crashes. The number of Cruise cars on San Francisco's roads has increased fivefold since the start of the year, Vogt said. Most of the nearly 400 cars the company deploys nationwide are based in San Francisco.

"anything new, especially a technology that is seen as fringe magic, tends to cause a lot of problems and attract a lot of attention," Vogt explained. "and people's attention will naturally lead to controversy."

Currently, Cruise offers a paid ride at night in San Francisco. Waymo has not been approved by the state government and is banned from offering a paid ride, but people can take the company's car for free. Now many people are applying to take part in the tests of these two companies.

Cruise and Waymo have spent billions of dollars trying to build an on-demand taxi service that they hope will eventually generate more profits without the need for human drivers. But so far, their business has generated very little revenue.

GM reported $102 million in Cruise-related sales last year, while costs and expenses were $3.3 billion. Mary Barra, chief executive, said in June that the company was in the early stages of a transition to a self-driving car. Executives also say the company aims to generate $50 billion in annual revenue by 2030.

Since 2020, Waymo has raised more than $5.7 billion from Alphabet and outside investors. Alphabet has been under intense pressure from shareholders to reduce spending on Waymo and other speculative businesses, but the company did not separately report Waymo's financial performance.

In addition to San Francisco, Phoenix also has hundreds of self-driving cars, and more are being tested in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. Three years ago, only a few cities had self-driving test vehicles.

San Francisco government officials say the number of accident reports involving Cruise and Waymo vehicles has tripled in recent months. Tumlin, the transportation director, said officials needed more public data from self-driving car companies to draw conclusions about their safety, and San Francisco was working towards that goal.

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