Robotaxis are finally starting to breakthrough

It is time to become optimistic about the future of self-driving cars, a technologist argued.

Azeem Azhar of the research group Exponential View was a skeptic of the near-term impact of robot cars: He wrote in 2022 that self-driving was on a “disappointing trajectory.”

But two years later, the tech appears to be on an upward curve, with the cost of a Waymo in San Francisco now competitive with an Uber.

“History is littered with technologies that excited early adopters but didn’t cut through,” Azhar admitted in IEEE Spectrum, but robotaxis are “starting to burst out of the tech bubble.”

It’s not all smooth progress for self-driving: GM is pulling the plug on its robotaxi subsidiary, pivoting to privately owned driverless instead.