“Many people have a memory of some ancient, avocado-green washing machine or refrigerator chugging along for decades at their grandparents’ house. But even then, decade-spanning durability was uncommon.

Although I couldn’t find a ton of hard data on appliance lifespan over the past 40 years, nearly everyone I spoke with — service technicians, designers, engineers, trade-organization representatives, salespeople — said that kind of longevity was always the outlier, not the norm.

‘Everybody talks about the Maytag washing machine that lasts 50 years,’ said Daniel Conrad, a former product engineer at Whirlpool Corporation who is now the director of design quality, reliability, and testing for a commercial-refrigeration company. ‘No one talks about the other 4.5 million that didn’t last that long.'”

From New York Times.

“Tesla deployed a small group of self-driving taxis picking up paying passengers on Sunday in Austin, Texas, with CEO Elon Musk announcing the ‘robotaxi launch’ and social-media influencers posting videos of their first rides.

The event marked the first time Tesla cars without human drivers have carried paying riders, a business that Musk sees as crucial to the electric car maker’s financial future.”

From Reuters.

“Amazon is gearing up to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at a sprawling plant near Silicon Valley as it prepares to challenge self-driving cab leader Waymo…

The 220,000-square-foot (20,440-square-meter) robotaxi factory announced Wednesday heralds a new phase in Amazon’s push into a technological frontier that began taking shape in 2009, when Waymo was launched as a secret project within Google.

Amazon began eyeing the market five years ago when it shelled out $1.2 billion for self-driving startup Zoox, which will be the brand.”

From Associated Press.

“Waymo said Wednesday it has applied for a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City, the Alphabet company’s first step in a sticky regulatory process to bring its robotaxis to U.S.’s largest city.

Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate its self-driving Jaguar I-Pace vehicles with a human safety operator behind the wheel in Manhattan. New York’s autonomous vehicle demonstration or testing permit requires a human driver to be able to take over; a $5 million insurance policy; and every test vehicle operator must be adequately trained in the safe operation of the test vehicle. 

New York law is especially prohibitive of autonomous vehicles. While securing a permit would be notable, Waymo is far from being able to launch commercial operations in the city — or even test without a human safety operator behind the wheel.”

From TechCrunch.