Mercedes parent company Daimler and car supplier Bosch have announced that they are launching an autonomous taxi service in California.
The German motoring giant will provide the vehicles, while Bosch will supply sensors and controls for the car’s autonomous features.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The two companies will also use driverless artificial intelligence (AI) systems provided by US-based technology firm Nvidia, says Engadget.
Nvidia’s Drive Pegasus AI platform can handle more than 320 trillion operations per seconds, and the companies believe this should be enough to provide level 4 or 5 autonomy - meaning the car would be capable of navigating a city without any input from the occupants.
During the pilot programme, each vehicle will be sent out with a safety driver to take over in the event of an emergency, reports Reuters.
To hitch a ride with the shuttles, customers will be able to access an app developed by Daimler that will offer a selection of pre-determined routes, the news site says.
The service will be free to use during the trial period, and the two firms are currently negotiating with cities in California to sign up for the pilot.
Daimler ultimately aims to build a driverless public transport infrastructure to compete with the likes of Google’s Waymo and the Volkswagen Group.
The Mercedes-owned company announced a partnership with Uber last year, but the ride-hailing giant scaled back its involvement in driverless vehicles after a person was struck by one of its test cars in Arizona in March.
Daimler teamed up with Bosch in April 2017 to begin developing a driverless vehicle, says the BBC. The two firms have been given the green light to trial test vehicles in both Germany and the US.
-
September 14 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-warTalking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
-
Crossword: September 14, 2025The Week's daily crossword puzzle
-
South Korea's divide over allowing Google MapsTalking Points The country is one of few modern democracies where the app doesn't work
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Is AI killing the internet?Talking Point AI-powered browsers and search engines are threatening the death of the open web
-
Unreal: A quantum leap in AI videoFeature Google's new Veo 3 is making it harder to distinguish between real videos and AI-generated ones
-
Google's new AI Mode feature hints at the next era of searchIn the Spotlight The search giant is going all in on AI, much to the chagrin of the rest of the web
-
Is Apple breaking up with Google?Today's Big Question Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser. The emergence of artificial intelligence could change that.
-
Google ruled a monopoly over ad tech dominanceSpeed Read Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the ruling as a 'landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square'
-
Is 'AI slop' breaking the internet?In The Spotlight 'Low-quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate' content is taking over social media and distorting search engine results
