Self-Driving Vehicles

Einride, a developer of electric, autonomous trucks, raised $110 million in Series B funding today. New investors Temasek, Soros Fund Management, Northzone, Maersk Growth and Build Capital led the round. Existing investors EQT Ventures, Plum Alley Investments, Norrsken VC, Ericsson and NordicNinja VC also participated. It should be noted that Moller-Maersk is the world’s largest…

EasyMile, a French developer of autonomous vehicles, raised $66 million (€55 million) in Series B funding. The funds will help it scale deployments of autonomous vehicles in closed-campus environments. The oversubscribed round will also allow EasyMile to invest in its long-term strategy of deploying autonomous shuttles on public transportation networks. The Series B round was…

The consolidation of the capital-intensive autonomous vehicle industry continued today. While Lyft is the latest company to abandon the development of autonomous vehicles, it won’t be the last. Lyft sold its self-driving unit, Level 5, to Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet Holdings for $550 million in cash. Lyft will receive $200 million upfront and $350 million…

Cameras above two intersections in Las Vegas will transmit data to Motional autonomous vehicles for a different view of tough intersections.

Nuro, a 2020 RBR50 Innovation Award winner, is launching autonomous pizza delivery in Houston this week with Domino’s. Select customers who place an online order – on certain days and times – from the Domino’s in Woodland Heights can have their food delivered by Nuro’s R2 robot. Customers who are selected for delivery via the…

Plus, a developer of autonomous truck technology, added $220 million in funding. This is an extension to the $200 million round raised in February 2021, bringing the round to a total of $420 million. Plus has now raised about $620 million since it was founded in 2016. The new financing was co-led by FountainVest Partners…

RBR50 company Nuro, which is developing autonomous delivery vehicles, added new investors to its $500 million Series C funding round that it announced in November 2020. Joining the round are Woven Capital and Chipotle Mexican Grill. This is the first investment for Woven Capital, which was established in January 2021 as the investment arm of…

Momenta, a Beijing-based developer of autonomous vehicle technology, raised a $500 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by SAIC Motor, China’s biggest automaker, Toyota, and Bosch. Momenta has now raised more than $700 million since it was founded in 2016. Momenta is developing what it calls the “brain” of autonomous vehicles,…

The tractors can perform pre-programmed tasks without a driver, or an operator can use Monarch’s automation features including Gesture and Shadow modes to have it follow a worker on the job.

A couple of weeks after a report said a deal was being discussed, Cruise is indeed acquiring autonomous vehicle startup Voyage. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The majority of Voyage’s 60-person team will join GM-backed Cruise. Voyage co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron will become Cruise’s VP of product. Founded in 2017, Voyage has…

New motion dataset offers object trajectories and corresponding 3D maps for over 100,000 segments, each 20 seconds long and mined for interesting interactions with cars, people, and more.

This is the second LiDAR startup Aurora acquired in less than two years. In May 2019, Aurora acquired Montana-based Blackmore.

Motional is now testing Level 4 fully driverless vehicles on public roads in Las Vegas. The Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture said the testing, which began earlier in February, consist of multiple driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans navigating intersections, unprotected turns, and interactions with other road users, including pedestrians and cyclists. There is a caveat: a Motional employee…

Waymo announced a couple of weeks ago it wouldn’t be expanding its robotaxi service in Arizona any time soon. I took that as a sign of Waymo gearing up to start testing in a new city – San Francisco, perhaps. Today, Waymo announced just that. It has begun limited testing in San Francisco, marking its…

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) yesterday released its annual Disengagement Report, which breaks down the number of times a human driver takes over control of an autonomous driving system being tested on the state’s public roads. The DMV released reports for 29 companies for the period from December 2019 to November 2020. Waymo (29,944.69)…

Plus, a developer of autonomous truck technology, raised $200 million in funding. The round was led by new investors Guotai Junan International, CPE, and Wanxiang International Investment. Existing investors also participated. Plus told The Robot Report it has now raised about $400 million since it was founded in 2016. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company just raised…

We posed the following question on a recent episode of The Robot Report Podcast: why did Aurora buy Uber’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG)? Well, it appears access to Uber’s existing investors and partners was a big reason why. Aurora today announced a partnership with Toyota and Denso. The companies will develop a fleet of autonomous…

Welcome to Episode 33 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community. You can subscribe to The Robot Report Podcast on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify and more. Please subscribe to the podcast and leave us…

Chinese self-driving pioneer AutoX is opening up its fully driverless robotaxi pilot program to the public in Shenzhen this morning. This is the first time the general public in China can book a ride in a robotaxi that doesn’t have a safety driver, AutoX claimed. Interested parties can sign up for a ride via this…

Uisee Technology, a Beijing-based autonomous driving technology startup, raised $154 million in funding from the Chinese government-backed Guokai National Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrade Fund. Uisee said the funding will be used to accelerate the development of its full-stack autonomous driving technology. Founded in 2016, Uisee’s autonomy stack helps create L4 autonomous vehicles for a variety…

Cruise will be sending its first self-driving test vehicles to Japan in 2021. Details about where, when and how many are unknown at this point. But the move appears to deepen the autonomous vehicle partnership between GM and Honda that started in 2018. GM is the majority shareholder in Cruise, while Honda is a major…

Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, raised $2 billion in new equity funding today. The San Francisco-based company said its post-money valuation is $30 billion. Cruise has raised about $7.3 billion since it was founded in 2013. GM, Honda Motor, and other institutional investors participated in the funding round. GM remains the majority stakeholder.…