Kia is returning to CES for the first time in five years and the company is set to take center stage for a spell by hosting a press conference. You'll be able to watch all the Kia CES announcements on January 8 at 6PM ET by visiting its website.

What to expect

The company says it will offer interested parties a closer peek at several of its concept models including the EV3 and EV4, as well as the EV9 and EV6 GT. Kia is also promising a look at its first so-called "platform beyond vehicle" (PBV) that's scheduled for mass production in 2025.

Kia describes PBV as a mobility solution that blends "fit-for-purpose EVs with advanced software solutions that will open the door to new businesses and lifestyles." To that end, the automaker will talk through some PBV tech, "its software-defined vehicle strategy" and partnership plans.

The brand has been teasing out some of its EV ambitions over the last year or so. For instance, we test drove the EV9 concept, which has seven seats and a large cargo space. In October, Kia offered more details on the EV3, EV4 and EV5 before providing a closer look at the first two of those the following month. It seems like it won't be too long before the public can get behind the wheel of at least one of these vehicles.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered airlines to temporarily ground some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes for safety inspections after an Alaska Airlines plane lost a cabin panel during a flight on Friday with about 180 people on board. The plane, which had only been in service since November, according to the New York Times, was able to safely land back at Portland International Airport in Oregon, where it had taken off from. There were no major injuries, though the Alaska division of the Association of Flight Attendants said workers described “explosive” decompression in the cabin and reported one flight attendant sustained minor injuries.

“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 Max 9 planes before they can return to flight,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. “Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the NTSB’s investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.” 

Immediately following the incident, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci put out a statement saying the company would be grounding its fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft for what it expects to be a few days as it conducts safety checks. “Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” Minicucci. The FAA order extends the grounding to “approximately 171 airplanes worldwide” that are either operated by US airlines or in US territory.

Minicucci also said that the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what happened with Flight 1282 and “we will fully support their investigation.” The plane had been on its way to Ontario, California. Reuters, citing FlightRadar24, reported that the blowout occurred at around 16,000 feet. In social media posts shared with Reuters and the NYT, passengers can be seen sitting right next to the gaping hole and the fully exposed sky.

Boeing's 737 Max was previously grounded for almost two years after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. All 189 people on board the plane were killed in the 2018 crash in Indonesia, and another 157 died in the 2019 crash in Ethiopia. In 2021, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion in a settlement with the Department of Justice to avoid criminal charges over the crashes.

Tesla is recalling 1.62 million vehicles in China over the same Autopilot safety issue that forced it to upgrade two million vehicles in the US. As before, fixes will be done will be via free over-the-air (OTA) updates to add features that ensure drivers pay attention while using Tesla's driver assistance system. It affects nearly every Tesla ever sold in the country, including imported Model S and Model X vehicles along with Model 3 and Model Y EVs made in China. 

According to China's State Administration for Market Regulations (SAMR), drivers may "misuse the level 2 combined driving assistance function, increase the risk of vehicle collision and posing safety risks." Like in the US, the OTA update will incorporate additional controls and alerts that encourage drivers to continue monitoring the vehicle when Tesla's Autosteer function is engaged. 

Tesla is also recalling 7,538 imported Model S and Model X vehicles to fix a problem that may prevent doors from unlocking in the event of a collision — an issue also addressed earlier in the US. That recall will be done via an OTA update as well, with no need for customers to go to Tesla stores.

Stateside, the NHTSA has kept its investigation into Autopilot safety controls open as it monitors Tesla's fixes. The regulator said last August that it was opening an investigation into Autopilot following 11 crashes with parked first responder vehicles since 2018 that resulted in 17 injuries and one death. In a letter to Tesla sent shortly afterward, the regulator requested detailed documentation on Autopilot to know how it ensures that human drivers will keep their eyes on the road while Autopilot is engaged and whether there are limits on where it can be used.

Earlier this week, Tesla said that it delivered a record 1.8 million EVs around the world. Over half of those (944,779 EVs) were sold in China, making it the company's biggest market by far. Tesla's Shanghai plant can produce up to 1.1 million Model 3 and Model Y cars a year for the Chinese market and exports to Europe, Australia and New Zealand. 

Tesla has unveiled its EV delivery and production figures for 2023, and the company had another banner year — but it has Chinese rival BYD close behind. Elon Musk's company produced 1.846 million EVs last year and delivered 1.809 million, besting 2022 deliveries by a wide 38 percent. Those figures include 494,989 EVs produced last quarter and 484,507 delivered.

Tesla's originally projected it would sell 2 million vehicles in 2023, but revised that figure downward in its October 2023 earnings call. It did exceed analyst expectations for Q4 2023, though, according to CNBC. 

Tesla built 476,777 Model 3 and Model Y EVs last quarter and delivered 461,538 of them. Those include sales of the refreshed "Highland" Model 3. While Elon Musk predicted last quarter that the Model Y would become "the bestselling car on Earth," the company didn't break down sales between its two most popular models. The company sold 18,212 "other models" consisting of Model S and Model X EVs. There are no sales figures yet for the Cybertruck. 

Tesla has battled some negative press with its EV lineup, particularly around its Autopilot system, which has seen regulatory scrutiny in the US and other countries. EV sales no doubt received a boost from several price drops over the last year as well, with the Model 3 and Model Y most recently dropping to $38,990 and $45,990, respectively. Tesla chalked up the price drops to "economic uncertainty, higher interest rates, and shifting consumer sentiment" in its October earnings call. 

One of Tesla's biggest markets is China, but the company is facing stiff competition there from another EV giant, BYD. That company announced sales of 3.02 million electrified vehicles in 2023, including 1.6 million were fully electric cars and 1.4 million hybrids. Most of BYD's EVs sell at significantly lower price points that Tesla's cars, however. 

Xiaomi, a Chinese brand once synonymous with affordable smartphones, is now attempting to make an even bigger splash with its first-ever electric car. Unveiled at a Beijing event earlier today, the Xiaomi SU7 — pronounced "soo-chee" in Chinese — is a sedan based on the company's very own Modena Architecture with HyperEngine electric motors. The line will come in two flavors: the dual-motor all-wheel-drive SU7 Max, and the single-motor rear-wheel-drive SU7.

It'll be a few more months before Xiaomi announces the prices, but it's already claiming that the SU7 Max has a range of up to 800km (497 miles; according to China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle aka CLTC), as well as a 0-100km/h acceleration of just 2.78s, both of which apparently beating Tesla's Model S and Porsche's Taycan Turbo. This is partly thanks to battery maker CATL's generous 101kWh 800V high-voltage platform, which offers a 220km range with just a 5-minute charge, or 390km in 10 minutes, or 510km in 15 minutes.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi hired talents from the auto industry to realize this project. Most notably, CEO Lei Jun claimed that Tianyuan Li, formerly of BMW's iX series and iVision concepts, offered himself to Xiaomi's auto design team. Li was also joined by James Qiu, who had previously worked on Mercedes-Benz's Vision EQXX design. They later recruited Chris Bangle, a BMW veteran, to be their design consultant.

The SU7 is about the same size as the BMW 5 series, coming in at 1,440mm tall, 1,963mm wide and 4,997mm long. You get three color options: the signature "aqua blue," gray or olive green. In his event, Lei highlighted the seemingly generous leg room as well as trunk spaces — 517L in the back and 105L in the front.

At the launch event, Lei highlighted details like the "water droplet" head lamps, each of which resembled the Chinese character for "rice" (which is the "mi" in "Xiaomi"), as well as halo rear brake light consisting of 360 LEDs. The exec also pointed out that his team went with the half-hidden door handles, because the more flush handles are apparently harder to use in cold weather.

Xiaomi

Just as Xiaomi teased earlier, the SU7 offers a HyperOS in-car entertainment system, which is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8295 processor and takes just 1.49 seconds to boot. You can access your media, adjust your seats or even control your Xiaomi home appliances via the 16.1-inch 3K central screen, as well as optional Xiaomi Pad tablets which can be mounted on magnetic ports (up to 22.5W output) behind the two front head rests. The UI on the central screen allows for up to three split windows for multitasking, and you can even cast your Xiaomi phone's screen to it for a seamless experience. As for music and video entertainment, it'll be complemented by the 23 internal Dolby Atmos speakers.

Much like Volkswagen, Xiaomi already knows that car owners still prefer to have some physical buttons, so it's kept a few for climate control, as well as two extra buttons — one for toggling the spoiler (Lei said this is largely for showing off), and one for adjusting the body height (to avoid scratching the bottom, if needed). You can also get an optional row of buttons mounted beneath the central display.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi has yet to share prices for the SU7 line, though Lei already hinted that they will be expensive — which is subjective, of course. We shall find out in a few months' time, and hopefully by then we'll know about availability outside China as well, but we wouldn't count on a US launch any time soon, if ever. Meanwhile, you can get the Xiaomi 14, 14 Pro smartphones and the Xiaomi Watch S3 eSIM in their limited edition colors — either aqua blue or olive green — to match the upcoming SU7.

Developing...

Tesla has issued a second recall in the US in as many weeks. This time around, it's recalling 120,423 Model S and X vehicles made between 2021 and 2023 due to an issue that may result in an unlocked door unlatching and opening during a crash. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), this increases the risk of injury and means that the EVs fail to comply with a federal safety regulation. The automaker has already issued a free over-the-air (OTA) update to resolve the problem and owner notification letters are expected to go out in February.

Earlier this month, Tesla recalled more than 2 million EVs over Autopilot safety concerns. The company issued a free OTA update with features that aim to make sure drivers are paying attention while using the system.

A “Compliance Car” is a vehicle designed not to be sold in large quantities but to satisfy rules around range-wide consumption. For instance, makers of enormous, gas-belching trucks may have to offer a thrifty, gas-sipping ride to balance out the emissions numbers. One infamous example is Aston Martin’s Cygnet, a rebadged Toyota iQ with a luxury interior that sold for three times the iQ’s price. Now, imagine a company chose to make one of those vehicles intentionally. That’s the best way to describe Lexus’ new LBX, a small but luxurious, Europe-exclusive city car that you’ll love sitting in while waiting in traffic.

The LBX is a subcompact car based on the same underlying platform (GA-B) as Toyota’s Yaris Cross, its tiny crossover SUV. The Yaris Cross is a city runaround pretending to be an SUV, complete with flared wheel arches, high ride height and optional All Wheel Drive. Lexus is keen to point out that this isn’t a rebadge, and that the luxury automaker has refined every facet of its design. The wheelbase is longer and wider, the powertrain smaller and faster, with luxury kit everywhere you look. You can call this many things, but it’s not a lazy cash-grab, especially given how much of the early chatter around this car talked about it diluting Lexus’ brand.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Inside, you’ll find a 1.5 liter, three-cylinder VVT-iE engine with a bi-polar Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery. That composition offers higher power density and faster response with a smaller footprint than Toyota’s own-brand hybrids, with a lighter weight which is key in such a small car. The combined total output is a restrained 136 DIN hp, which is fitting for a car designed to sit in traffic. But Lexus piqued my interest in this car by claiming that its new hybrid system offered “powerful acceleration like that of a battery electric vehicle.” Given the stately manner in which most small hybrids move, I was curious to put that claim to the test.

If you’re only accelerating to get off the line when the lights change, then you’ll find plenty to like here. It’s too much of a stretch to compare it to an EV but if you’re looking for a performant city car, it’s no slouch. It thrives in the cities, where its small-ish size, speed and driveability let you dart around corners and dive into tight spaces. But this power doesn’t run too far beyond the lights, and putting your foot down on the highway exposes this engine. No amount of sound dampening tech — and there’s a lot of it in this car — can mask the LBX’s anguished screams when you try to accelerate or put the power down going up hills.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Up front, it’s roomy with a comfortable driving position, while the rear bench seat is higher to offer the passengers a better view. I’m 5’ 11” and had enough headroom, but I doubt anyone taller than me would fancy riding in here for long. There’s not a huge amount of rear legroom either, so you wouldn’t want to do a long trip in one of these.

The Lexus LBX is a lot of car, too much for the role in your life that it’s intended to play, with a lot of frou-frou. Given this is a car designed for short journeys, I’m not sure it needs to have as much technology on board as it actually does. The model I tested had a digital instrument binnacle, a big central console and a heads-up display. Plus, flappy paddles so you can control your braking level and three USB-C ports in the central console. Oh, and a suite of safety tools that were so sensitive it’d erupt in a chorus of pings and bongs if I so much as glanced at the accelerator before the way in front of me was clear.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Lexus says the LBX is targeted at “younger, city-smart Europeans” rather than the company’s traditional, older base. The marketing is full of youths in red vinyl overcoats and Vitaly jewelry but I’m not sure that’s the demographic who’ll be interested. I’m not sure too many young, city smart Europeans could afford a car like this, or even know how to drive in the first place. Some of the recent stats have been skewed by COVID but the general trend of young people learning to drive has pointed down for a while. The company’s representatives did mention they thought another potential demographic would be empty nesters looking to downsize.

And then there’s the price, with the base model costing £29,995 (around $37,700) on the road in the UK while the fully-specced model is £40,545 (around $50,870). Nobody needs to be told if that’s a lot or not, especially given the various ways people buy new cars these days. But Lexus, knowing that it’s not going to undercut similarly high-spec city cars in the space, say that while the up-front price is higher, it’ll save drivers plenty with its fuel economy. I’m not sure how many people buy a luxury car because they’re keeping their eye on the dollars and cents.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Fundamentally, as much as I like the LBX, I’m unable to square its inherent contradictions as they pile up on top of one another. There are very few faults that I can pick at which are tied to just this vehicle, rather than the quirks inherent in the company’s range. But I just can’t see a world in which people would line up to buy a car that’s this over-equipped and over-specced given the environment in which it thrives.

Reuters published an explosive investigative report Wednesday chronicling Tesla's alleged patterns of deliberate neglect and shifting blame onto customers for parts failures. The damning exposé accounts the Elon Musk-led company’s alleged long-running tendency to claim vehicle owners had engaged in “driver abuse,” charging them for repairs over failures caused by parts the company discussed internally as being flawed. The issues are often related to suspension and steering. Externally, Tesla’s portrayal of the problems has ranged from flat-out denial to partial acknowledgment.

Several accounts in the story document Tesla owners who were told their car's issues stemmed from prior damage or driver abuse. In some cases, they had just bought the vehicles:

One of the drivers Reuters interviewed, Shreyansh Jain, suffered a suspension collapse in a 2023 Tesla Model Y he had owned for less than 24 hours. When the automaker told him a lower control arm separating from the steering knuckle caused the failure, he expected Tesla to cover the repairs. A service rep who inspected the car said they found “no evidence of any external damage,” as revealed in a text message. 

About a week later, Tesla sent a letter to Jain, skirting blame and citing “a prior external influenced damage to the front-right suspension” as the cause.

Jain said he was the only person to have driven the car on its first day of ownership, and he hadn’t had an accident before the suspension failed. “I was like, ‘Bloody hell, how can metal just snap like that when I know for sure the car has not hit anything?’” he said to Reuters. Three months later, the repairs were complete, and Jain paid a $1,250 deductible (with his insurance covering the rest). He says his rates then spiked dramatically on another car he owned.

Tesla

Cincinnati surgeon Trace Curry paid $110,000 for a 2016 Tesla Model X. He replaced the SUV’s control arms twice, once covered by warranty and a second time at his expense. After the warranty ran out, Reuters reviewed invoices showing Curry paid around $10,000 for failed suspension and drive-axle parts. Then, in 2018, he replaced the front half shafts (under warranty); he replaced them again (at his own cost) for $1,500.

Reuters’ investigation suggests Tesla knew that many of the parts that required replacing in Curry's Model X — control arms, suspension and front half shafts — had high failure rates.

Andrew Lundeen was driving his wife’s 2018 Model 3 in August when the car’s power steering failed while driving over a speed bump. The Santa Rosa, California, resident told Reuters a Tesla service manager told him a power steering connector had corroded — and attributed it to a car wash, which the employee cited as a known problem.

Lundeed paid $4,400 out of pocket to replace the steering rack and a wiring harness, allegedly thanks to his bold decision to visit a car wash. “This is the only car I’ve ever heard of where a car wash can damage the wiring,” he told the Tesla manager. Lundeed described the employee as saying, “All I can tell you is we’re not a 100-year-old company like GM and Ford. We haven’t worked all the bugs out yet.”

Photo by Roberto Baldwin / Engadget

The investigation also documents Tesla’s can-kicking and inconsistent responses to part recalls in different regions. For example, the company’s engineers identified the aft link, part of the suspension, as having snapped in several incidents while owners drove at low speeds (similar to Jain’s account). A former Tesla employee “with direct knowledge of the matter” told Reuters that between 2016 and 2020, Tesla “resolved” around 400 aft link complaints in China — either through in-warranty repairs or through “goodwill repairs” if they were out-of-warranty.

The Musk-led automaker delayed a recall for four years, only agreeing to one after Chinese regulators applied pressure. The country’s State Administration for Market Regulation described a “risk of accidents” as part of the rationalization.

However, despite global reports of failures, Tesla never recalled the part in the US and Europe. The company told US regulators the problems resulted from “driver abuse.” Reuters also viewed a 2019 “talking points” memo urging service centers to blame “vehicle misuse,” like “hitting a curb or other excessive strong impact,” as the culprit. “Abuse” and “misuse” are conditions in the Musk-led company’s contract, giving the automaker leeway to reject in-warranty repairs for incidents it labels as such.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating Tesla since 2020 for the fore link (a suspension part) in Model S and X, and it began looking into power steering failures in the 2023 Model 3 and Model Y in July. Reuters’ nearly 5,000-word report is worth a read, especially if you’re a Tesla owner who has paid for repairs out of pocket. The NHTSA will likely find it an equally compelling read.

Volkswagen is the latest automaker to embrace Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) in electric vehicles. Subsidiaries Audi, Porsche and Scout Motors will implement the NACS in their North American EVs starting in 2025 as well.

The VW brands are also looking into providing owners of existing models with adapters so they can tap into Tesla's Supercharger network. There are more than 15,000 Supercharger stations in North America. VW's EVs will be able to charge at those in addition to more than 3,800 DC fast charging outlets run by Electrify America and Electrify Canada.

With so many carmakers adopting the NACS, Tesla's charging solution is becoming a de facto standard. GM, Volvo, Polestar, Mercedes, Honda, BMW, Lucid and others have all pledged to support NACS charging within the next couple of years.

On the other hand, ChargePoint started rolling out support for the NACS across its EV charging network in October. Electrify America plans to offer the NACS connector at its stations by 2025 as well.

The year had started so well for robotaxis. Cruise and Waymo came into 2023 riding high on fresh investments from General Motors and Google, respectively, as well as rapidly growing interest from the general public and a downright rabid rate of adoption by city governments. Things were looking up, very up, for the burgeoning self-driving vehicle industry! Then a driverless Crusie taxi accidentally dragged a hit-and-run victim down a San Francisco street for a few dozen feet and everything just sort of went to shit from there. So fragile, these Next Big Things. Let’s take a look back through the year that was to see how autonomous taxi tech might recover from this catastrophe.

Cruise (Out of) Control

Cruise came into this year looking like a nigh-on unstoppable force of transportational change as the core of GM's self-driving efforts. The company received a $1.5 billion investment from the automaker in March 2022 after GM spent $2.1 buying equity ownership for the startup from Softbank Vision Fund. In February the company announced that its test fleet of driverless taxis had traveled a million miles of San Francisco’s streets without a human behind the wheel. The program had only started the previous November.

"When you consider our safety record, the gravity of our team’s achievement comes into sharper focus," Mo Elshenawy, Cruise's EVP of engineering, said in February. "To date, riders have taken tens of thousands of rides in Cruise AVs. In the coming years, millions of people will experience this fully driverless future for themselves."

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt had been installed at his position in December 2021 after GM CEO Mary Barra ousted Dan Ammann from the spot. Vogt spent the following year laying out a grand vision of “zero crashes, zero traffic, and zero emissions,” though, according to a November report from the New York Times, the company “put a priority on the speed of the program over safety” during his tenure, cutting corners on safety in order to get more vehicles on the road. And expand Cruise did, into Houston and Los Angeles most notably, despite a growing number of traffic incidents and accidents left behind by its vehicles.

In April, the company was given permission to operate its driverless vehicles throughout San Francisco, 24/7 as well as pick up paying passengers during daylight hours. Previously, only Cruise employees were allowed to ride in the robotaxis and they could only operate when the sun was out. In August, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 3-to-1 in favor of allowing Cruise (and Waymo as well) to to pick up paying passengers at all hours.

Not everybody was fully on board with the robotaxi takeover, mind you. In January 2023, San Francisco officials requested the CPUC slow or even halt the expansion of self-driving vehicle services in the city, arguing that the free-for-all growth OK’d by state regulators was becoming an “unreasonable” burden. In fact, barely a week after the CPUC voted in favor of expansion, the California DMV opened an investigation into an altercation between a Cruise taxi and a fire truck. In response, the DMV had Cruise cut its operating fleet in half — down to 50 vehicles during daylight hours and 150 at night — until it had completed its investigation. Then there was the whole “using robotaxis as love hotels” issue in August.

Those mishaps were bad. The events of October 3 and Cruise’s response to the resulting investigation proved unforgivable. As the company initially explained in the above thread, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian, pushing her into the path of the Cruise taxi in the lane to her right. The taxi ran the woman over, despite aggressively braking, and ended up dragging her 20 feet until coming to a stop. EMS crews were able to extract the pedestrian from underneath the taxi using the jaws of life, and rushed her to medical treatment with critical injuries.Though she has not been identified, the pedestrian was reportedly in serious condition as late as October 25.

If that weren’t bad enough, Cruise then allegedly misled regulators about when the taxi engaged its brakes — telling them that the taxi had stopped immediately, not eventually, after slowly traveling another 20 feet down the block. The company then repeatedly delayed in releasing video of the incident to investigators until October 19.

The company’s cover-up efforts puts Cruise in financial jeopardy with the CPUC, which is currently considering fining it as much as $1.5 million for its obfuscating actions. The Commission's decision will be made in early February at an upcoming evidentiary hearing.

More immediately, the accident itself set off a whole slew of investigations, regulatory and internal alike. The Exponent consulting firm was brought in as an independent investigator and promptly dredged up some rather unflattering data regarding the robotaxis’ difficulties with spotting and reacting to the presence of small children. That revelation wasn’t so bad, at least compared to the company’s decision to keep the vehicles on the road even after being informed of the potentially deadly defect.

The California DMV was not amused and, two weeks after the accident occurred, the department suspended Cruise’s license to operate within the state, effectively shuttering its robotaxi operations. That’s a huge blow to GM, which has sunk billions into the startup and was anticipating the robotaxi service to generate as much as $5 billion annually when operations were to begin in 2025. In mid-November, the company recalled all 950 of its autonomous taxis in operation, and even paused robotaxi rides with human safety drivers behind the wheel a week later, as part of a “full safety review.”

Then things got even worse. On November 18, CEO Kyle Vogt announced his resignation from his position a week after GM installed EVP of Legal and Policy Craig Glidde (who was already a Cruise board member) as Chief Administrative Officer. The following day, company co-founder and Chief Product Officer Daniel Kan also announced his departure.

In response to Vogt's departure, GM promoted Mo Elshenawy from EVP of Engineering to the dual role of President and CTO, leaving the CEO position currently vacant. GM CEO Mary Barra told reporters recently that the company has “a lot of confidence with what the two co-presidents will do,” but will be “leaning in to make sure that it meets our strict requirements from a safety perspective.”

GM suddenly found itself holding the multibillion dollar bag, so it cut off funding near immediately, slashing budgets to the tune of “hundreds of millions” of dollars. As a result, Cruise has since suspended its equity program and begun laying off employees, starting with those in autonomous vehicle operations.

"The most important thing for us right now is to take steps to rebuild public trust," Cruise said in a statement. "Part of this involves taking a hard look inwards and at how we do work at Cruise, even if it means doing things that are uncomfortable or difficult."

But Cruise isn’t entirely dead yet, as Elshenawy explained in a recent email to staff. The company plans to scale back its self-driving ambitions and relaunch with a renewed focus on the current Chevy Bolt AV robotaxi platform, rather than its custom-built Origin vehicle. As such the company is pausing production on the Origin at least through 2024 but does plan to continue the program at some point in the future.

Waymo Money, Waymo Problems

Waymo entered 2023 in much the same way as Cruise did: riding high on the hype and promise of self-driving vehicle technology. However it is ending the year in a very different place from its biggest competitor.

Google-backed Waymo had received glowing praise from Swiss RE, a leading global reinsurer, regarding the safety of its vehicles versus human drivers the previous September, and had just launched its second Waymo One taxi service area that December, this time in Phoenix, Arizona, running a route between downtown and the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Los Angeles joined Waymo’s stable of cities in February. Much as it was rolled out in San Francisco, Waymo’s self-driving vehicles were initially made available only to riders who were part of the Waymo Research Trusted Tester program in a limited area (in this case, Santa Monica), always outside of rush hour and only in limited numbers.

The following month the company launched a similar effort in Austin, Texas, a town where it had conducted some of its earliest self-driving tests back in 2015. Austin is a hot town to test self-driving vehicles in, on account of a 2017 state law that prevents cities from locally regulating the technology’s use and deployment on their streets.

Things were going so well for Waymo come summer that the company announced it would shift gears, pushing back plans for its self-driving truck idea to instead focus fully on its expanding robotaxi service.

“Given the tremendous momentum and substantial commercial opportunity we’re seeing on the ride-hailing front, we’ve made the decision to focus our efforts and investment on ride-hailing,” Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov wrote in a July blog post. "We’re iterating more quickly than ever on our technology by pushing forward state of the art AI/ML, and seeing significant business growth and rider demand in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.”

By August, Waymo announced that Austin would be joining those towns as the fourth city to host its autonomous taxi service, with the program rolling out through the Fall. That same month, Waymo received its driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), enabling the company to begin charging passengers for its robotaxi rides as well as expanding the service to additional customers. Previously, the company could only charge for rides if a human safety driver was behind the wheel. The company acknowledged at the time that demand was “incredibly high” (signups had already reportedly passed 100,000 users) but that it was working to make its fully autonomous trips "available to everyone over time."

“Things are growing… The ridership is increasing in both Phoenix and SF,” he continued, noting that the company provides more than 10,000 trips per city each week. Overall, it would have been a pretty great year for Waymo — especially after chief rival, Cruise, effectively imploded over the course of Q4 — had the company’s workforce not been subject to not one, not two, but three rounds of layoffs impacting over 300 employees.

The Road Ahead for Robotaxis

As we head into the new year, Waymo is effectively the only game in town, now that Cruise isn’t a viable commercial entity for the foreseeable future.

Midway through the year, analysts predicted the robotaxi market, valued at just over $1.1 billion in 2022, could rise to anywhere from $45.7 billion in 2030 to $118 billion in 2031 citing, “increasing demand for shared transportation, advancements in vehicle technology, growing interest in fuel-efficient public transportation, and improved infrastructure.”

Those outlooks have been tempered in recent months, at least for short term estimates, with Cruise temporarily out of the picture. Forrester Analytics, for example, now expects drone delivery services to become the dominant self-driving vehicle segment in 2024 as pushback from regulators slows development of robotaxi transit tech.

“Expect a booming year for self-driving forklifts, curbside delivery robots, and drone delivery, driven by the increasing popularity of e-commerce, the need for last-mile delivery solutions, and more sophisticated autonomous technologies,” wrote Craig Le Clair, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester.

We are, of course, still waiting on those million robotaxis Elon Musk promised us back in 2019.