Waymo opens subsidiary in China

Alphabet company and former Google self-driving project Waymo just opened a subsidiary in China. And no, it’s not to test out its self-driving cars. Huimo Business Consulting Co. (which sounds rather similar to Waymo) is there to work on building a supplier network for the company. Huimo opened in Shanghai on May 22 and according to a filing with China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, it was set up with 3.5 million yuan (around CA$670,000) with Waymo listed as an investor. According to the filling the subsidiary will focus on logistics consulting, supply chain, and autonomous driving parts and product design.

Source: TechCrunch

Cadillac's Super Cruise: Going Handsfree on the Highway

Text and photos by Emily Chung.

Cadillac has introduced Super Cruise, the world’s first handsfree driving technology for the highway. This system allows drivers to let go of the wheel (and pedals) on divided, limited-access freeways with defined on and off ramps. Essentially, ‘limited-access’ means that the freeways have controlled access, which include the provincial highways (e.g. 400-series highways in Ontario). Cadillac engineers have validated and mapped over 210,000 kilometres of highways and freeways in Canada and the US for the system. Hit jump for our hands on, or rather, hands off this impressive new autonomous driving technology.

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Toyota now has a self-driving car company to focus on software systems

Toyota fully committing to its autonomous driving initiatives and is now making sure the research it has been working on in the field gets the focus it needs. The company just established the Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development or TRI-AD, for short. It’s a sub-company underneath the Toyota Research Institute, which is already working on the company’s self-driving car programs. Toyota is partnering with auto-parts manufacturer Aisin Seiki and Denso and will be investing US$2.8 billion into the company and hire around 1,000 employees for the company.

The focus of TRI-AD will be on developing software systems for self-driving vehicles. “Building production-quality software is a critical success factor for Toyota’s automated driving program,” said Dr. James Kuffner, the former CTO of TRI and the new CEO of TRI-AD. “This company’s mission is to accelerate software development in a more effective and disruptive way, by augmenting the Toyota Group’s capability through the hiring of world-class software engineers. We will recruit globally, and I am thrilled to lead this effort.”

Source: BGR

Daimler and Bosch to start testing self-driving taxis soon

Mercedes-Benz’s parent company Daimler and Bosch first promised to bring fully autonomous vehicles to the market in the next decade. But with their competition working faster to bring their self-driving cars into the market, it looks like they acknowledged that they needed to work faster. Bosch chief Volkmar Denner told German weekly publication Automobilwoche that they will be testing their self-driving taxis within a few months. No additional details about when exactly but it is at least a more definitive timetable for the project.

The advantage Daimler believes they have over their competition is the purpose-built nature of their taxis. These taxis apparently won’t just be a “technology-kit mounted on a serial vehicle,” or so Daimler VP Wilko Stark says but they’re designed to be autonomous vehicles “from the beginning.”

Source: Engadget