Waymo announced on Thursday that it was ordering 62,000 Pacifica minivans from Fiat Chrysler. It’s the latest sign that Alphabet’s self-driving car company is operating on a different level from the rest of the industry.
The last few months have had a lot of bad news for fans of self-driving cars. Last December, after news that Volvo and Ford might not achieve ambitious early goals, Wired wrote that self-driving cars were entering a “trough of disillusionment.” Events over the last six months have only deepened that trough.
In March, an Uber self-driving car struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, forcing Uber to suspend its testing program indefinitely. In May, the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report finding big problems with Uber’s software.
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Source: Ars Technica – As Uber and Tesla struggle with driverless cars, Waymo moves forward