Self driving taxis

NY Times -  When self-driving cars started picking up commercial passengers in San Francisco two years ago, they were not eagerly welcomed. Protesters took to the streets demanding that the vehicles be removed, citing concerns about safety and the loss of people’s jobs.

Then an autonomous car operated by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, ran over and dragged a pedestrian, not long after another Cruise vehicle collided with a fire truck. The company’s vehicles were eventually taken off the road. The future of self-driving cars in the home of the tech industry’s artificial intelligence boom looked like it was on the rocks.

But Google’s Waymo, a self-driving-car company with a more cautious approach, stuck around, and today the situation has flipped. San Francisco has, to the surprise of many and the continuing aggravation of a few, become “Waymo-pilled.”

Now Waymo is getting another significant competitor in San Francisco. Amazon announced that it was beginning a free test program in the city on Tuesday for Zoox, its boxy, carriage-shaped robot taxis. The company has also been testing its robot taxis in Las Vegas since September and plans to expand to Miami and Austin, Texas. But San Francisco is the first city where the companies will compete head to head.  More