In recent years, the autonomous-vehicle industry has confronted a reality check. The promise of cars that can drive anywhere under a variety of conditions without human supervision has shifted from a near-term goal to the distant endpoint of a long, incremental process.
Waymo
Waymo LLC is an American autonomous driving technology development company. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google. Waymo operates a commercial self-driving taxi service in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area called “Waymo One”, with Chandler, Arizona fully mapped. In October 2020, the company expanded the service to the public, and it is the only self-driving commercial service that operates without safety backup drivers in the vehicle.
Argo AI
Argo AI is an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs. Argo AI is an independent company that builds the software, hardware, maps, and cloud-support infrastructure to power self-driving vehicles. Argo has two major investors: Ford Motor Co. (2017) and the Volkswagen Group (2020). Argo’s Self Driving System (SDS) technology will be incorporated into vehicles manufactured by the auto-makers through these partnerships.
Cruise
Cruise LLC is an American self-driving car company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2013 by Kyle Vogt and Dan Kan, Cruise tests and develops autonomous car technology.
Cruise is interested in building self-driving vehicles to connect people with the places, things, and experiences they care about. The company’s vehicles are on the road in San Francisco, and are designed to navigate unpredictable driving conditions and environments.
The company looks to manufacture a self-driving vehicle that is entirely electric, and to use these vehicles to help solve transportation challenges around the globe. Their self-driving vehicles utilize artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning to function and deliver an autonomous vehicle experience to their customers.
The vehicles that the company provides are covered with sensors that provide information regarding the environment. They utilize machine learning techniques and cloud-based tools to help vehicles understand what is happening around them. The platform creates visual 2D and 3D simulation tests.
Weride
WeRide was founded in 2017, formerly known as JingChi.ai, the company is committed to creating a new way of intelligent travel available to everyone. October 31, 2018, WeRide completed Series A financing, led by Alliance RNM strategy, which makes the company the first Chinese L4-level L4 autonomous driving company to receive strategic investment from global automakers.
In January this year, WeRide announced that its Series A financing was followed by two other important institutions, namely SenseTime and ABC International, which raised tens of millions of dollars. It is reported that this round of financing is based on strategic investment.
Pony.ai
As a popular company in China’s self-driving field, Pony.ai has been committed to providing the most advanced, safe and reliable self-driving technology. in April 2017, Pony.ai launched its first-generation self-driving test vehicle and subsequently received a California self-driving test license. in February 2018, Pony.ai’s driverless fleet officially hit the road, launching the first regular trial operation in China. In June of the same year, Pony.ai received a driverless road test license in Beijing. At the end of the year, Pony.ai released the PonyPilot self-driving mobile mobility program and took the lead in piloting the regular operation of Robotaxi on open roads in urban areas in Guangzhou, becoming the first company to provide Robotaxi services in the Chinese market.
