“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.

“A five-minute charge for an EV, virtually as quick as a gasoline fill-up, has long seemed a quixotic dream.

Now electric Don Quixotes can save critical time on their quests, at least in China. BYD’s ‘megawatt charging’ is here. And the company’s 1,000-kilowatt fast chargers could eliminate perhaps the biggest consumer gripe over EVs: That they take too long to charge.

BYD, the automaker that has passed Tesla in global EV sales, demonstrated its record-setting tech in Beijing during the recent Shanghai auto show. The numbers are staggering: More than a kilometer of added driving range per second on the plug. It supplies 400 kilometers of fresh range (nearly 250 miles) in five minutes. Even by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s more-realistic estimates, that equates to about 270 kilometers (168 miles) of range in five minutes.”

From IEEE Spectrum.