Waymo operates driverless taxis in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Currently over 100,000 people per week use a Waymo taxi to get to a local destination, but the cars are limited on which roads they can use.
However, the brand’s confidence in the technology has been shaken. Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, recently said that truly autonomous cars will never exist and that they will always require some form of “user interaction.”
Honda
A couple of years ago, Honda expressed its intentions of launching Level 3 autonomous- capable vehicles next year and Level 4 capable vehicles by 2025. However, little further information has since been released on the project.
Hyundai
Hyundai’s research ranges from remotely maintaining and servicing your car to fully autonomous vehicles, and the brand says driverless cars will be with us by 2030. It launched Motional in 2023, a brand dedicated to driverless taxis, and in Boston, USA has begun working on an Ioniq 5 robotaxi project. It’s a level 4 autonomous taxi that can operate without a driver at all.
Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover has been testing autonomous vehicles since 2017 and has developed self-driving friendly tech such as a 3D head-up display, as well as a system which projects an autonomous vehicle’s direction of travel onto the road, informing other road users of its intentions. The brand also recently announced three new tech hubs in Germany, Italy and Spain (alongside existing ones in USA, Hungary, Ireland, UK, China and India) that are working on artificial intelligence (AI) tech in relation to self-driving cars.
Kia
Kia began publicly testing Level 4 autonomous cars at the start of 2019, with the intention of releasing the technology on its production cars from 2021. While the first Level 4 cars will only be available in “smart cities,” the brand expects that, by 2025, it will be able to offer the technology to fleet customers. The Korean marque had invested $2 billion in driverless research and development at the end of 2018.
Mazda
Mazda has no fully autonomous programme, but is keen to develop more advanced assistance systems. Such as its Co-Pilot Concept2 which is set to be standard across all its models by 2025.
Mercedes
Mercedes entered a partnership with BMW, which promised to develop Level 4 autonomous-capable vehicles (which operate within specific geofenced areas) by 2024, but it’s clear now that there is still work to do. The German brand unveiled its all-electric EQS concept at the 2019 Frankfurt Motor Show, which is capable of Level 3 autonomy. The brand was the first car maker to sell level 3 autonomous tech in the US market (California and Nevada only) in its cars, which allows driving without holding the wheel on certain roads.