Waymo starts offering self-driving minivans for Lyft riders

If you find yourself in Waymo’s Phoenix, Arizona testing zone, you might be able to get a self-driving Lyft ride. The autonomous driving subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet launched its tie-in with ride-hailing service Lyft. Less than 10 self-driving minivans are roaming the streets of Phoenix and picking up Lyft riders who opt-in with the program. According to TechCrunch, Waymo plans to introduce 10 cars in the testing zone but it “isn’t there yet.” While not a lot of people will get to use the service, those who decide to be part of the testing can choose to use the Waymo minivan or a traditional Lyft ride.

This partnership doesn’t mean Waymo isn’t working on its own projects. The company still has its own commercial autonomous ride-hailing service called Waymo One. Earlier this month, Waymo struck a deal with Nissan and Renault to help build self-driving vehicles for those automakers.

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

Uber and Waymo abruptly settles lawsuit

In a surprising turn of events, Uber and Waymo have agreed to settle a self-driving trade secrets lawsuit on the fifth day of the case going to trial. Uber agreed to pay out 0.3 percent of its equity, which with the company’s US$72 billion valuation, puts that at over $245 million in stock. The company has also promised to work with Waymo’s parent company Alphabet to make sure none of Google’s confidential data will be used for Uber’s self-driving program (both in the hardware and software side).

The case began over a year ago when Waymo filed a suit against Uber accusing one of its former engineers, Anthony Levandowski, of downloading around 9.7GB of data or around 14,000 files before abruptly resigning from the company and later creating his own company called Ottomotto, which was acquired by Uber a few months later.

Source: Ars Technica

Alphabet’s Waymo in talks with Honda regarding self-driving car tech

After Google recently spun out its self-driving car division into Waymo, it looks like the new Alphabet company is trying to strike a big deal. Honda announced it is entering talks with Waymo on integrating autonomous vehicle tech into its cars. The discussion is still in its very early stages but Honda is proposing to give Waymo modified vehicles to help speed the process along. The new announcement isn’t meant to derail Honda’s own automated driving plans, which it intends to have self-driving cars on the road by 2020, but will be considered a “different technological approach.” If it does push through though, this would help legitimize Waymo further as a viable option for manufacturers who just plan to integrate an established self-driving platform over creating their own version.

Source: Engadget