Autonomous vehicles race

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The self driving cars are slowly becoming a raising topic. From time to time some of the major car manufacturers are making big decisions regarding future of autonomous cars. What is it all about?

General perspective

In most cases when we think about autonomous cars the first thing that comes to our mind is Tesla. There are many videos presenting how it is performing and how drivers use the feature of autonomous driving. What also can be one of the first associations is Waymo. The company operates partially in Phoenix and San Francisco, offering rides with its cars. However, there are many more interesting projects going on in this industry. Recently, the not-so-popular brands also had big news.

Recent activities

The Cruise company is an interesting example. They build their technology on the Chevy Bolt car. With all equipment, it should have even more than 40 sensors. They should be able to allow the car to see the surroundings in detail. Combined with high-performing algorithms it helps the car to decide what to do. In the future Cruise wants to build “The Cruise Origin” which will be closer to the bus without any steering wheel. Recently, General Motors decided to also focus more on autonomous vehicles so-called “race”. It bought a bigger stake in Cruise. The 2,1 billion dollars investment is generally acquiring Softbank’s stake in Cruise. It seems that General Motors wants to have bigger control and influence over the Cruise future. Following the trade, GM states that it holds 80% ownership over Cruise. What is interesting six weeks earlier Cruise started to offer its services in San Francisco. It is possible that the technology is getting more and more promising and big companies do not want to lose any opportunity. On the other side of the self-driving cars market, a new player tries to start in the US. The Whale Dynamic company from China develops technology, especially for autonomous deliveries. What is uncommon, originally the company wanted to develop software for managing traffic. In the long term future Whale Dynamic wants to shift from deliveries to passenger cars. Now it managed to get 2,5 million dollars in a seed round of funding. Lastly company has also a unique idea to propose a bi-directional possibility of movement of the car.