Quote from Ndubuisi Ekekwe on August 18, 2021, 7:06 PM

Silicon Valley's push to automate driving is floundering: Starsky Robotics shut down in 2020, Uber exited the business last year, and Lyft sold its self-driving car business to Toyota. And then, in perhaps the clearest example of the tech industry's challenges with self-driving vehicles, there is Waymo. The Alphabet-owned company has been operating self-driving rides in Phoenix for four years in what had been expected to be the first stop of a broader rollout for its technology. But Waymo continues to face problems, as Bloomberg Businessweek reported Tuesday. (Fortune)

In 2017, the year Waymo launched self-driving rides with a backup human driver in Phoenix, one person hired at the company was told its robot fleets would expand to nine cities within 18 months. Staff often discussed having solved "99% of the problem" of driverless cars. "We all assumed it was ready," says another ex-Waymonaut. "We'd just flip a switch and turn it on."

But it turns out that last 1% has been a killer. Small disturbances like construction crews, bicyclists, left turns, and pedestrians remain headaches for computer drivers. Each city poses new, unique challenges, and right now, no driverless car from any company can gracefully handle rain, sleet, or snow. Until these last few details are worked out, widespread commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles is all but impossible.