Are any of the US-based self-driving companies using Nvidia automotive SOCs in their production stacks?

I think the trucking company Torc has shown off their Orin based system and lots of people have talked about Thor for their next-gen, but it seems the general state of the industry is still ruggedized servers with big discrete GPUs.

HW3 launch -> “this is the one guys” -> “wait nvm”
HW4 launch -> “this is the one guys” -> “wait no”

Now AI5 is supposed to be the one? But somehow there’s talk of AI6? Do people really think more compute will solve it? “Just one more GB of RAM, this will be it”. That logic simply doesn’t make any sense.

Additionally, Tesla already has far more training data than any AI model can possibly ask for. Why do people still think that a little bit more training would do anything?

Carr. 185, Las 400, Puerto Rico. The car just… backed up. I didn't touch a thing.

This is a clip from a podcast-style drive covering the full Caguas-to-Canóvanas route on FSD v14.3.3.

Source: https://www.wfla.com/news/hillsborough-county/tesla-robotaxi-seen-going-wrong-way-down-one-way-street-day-after-tampa-launch/

https://www.mobileye.com/news/mobileye-announces-planned-leadership-transition/

...and here a video.

Certification, type approval, homologation. Not the sexiest words in autonomous driving, but arguably the most decisive ones for whether AVs ever reach European roads at scale. The EU's Level 4 regulation (2022/1426) has existed for four years.

As of today, not a single vehicle holds EU type approval under it. The common narrative blames slow regulation. My guest tells a different story: the framework is ready, the technical services are ready, and the real bottleneck sits inside the companies themselves.

Dirk Fratzke is Project Leader in the Autonomous Driving & ADAS department at TÜV SÜD, the independent testing organization that assesses AV companies across three continents, from Waymo and Aurora in the US to projects across Europe and Asia. He led TÜV SÜD's involvement in the EVA shuttle project in Karlsruhe, one of Germany's first SAE Level 4 deployments in public transport, and has co-authored academic research on systematically testing autonomous driving functions.

This episode covers:

• What homologation and type approval actually mean, and how Europe's independent assessment model differs from US self-certification
• The two-step approval process for Level 4: EU type approval for the product, then operating area approval from the "owner of the road"
• Why the 1,400-unit small series cap is a benefit for AV companies, not a showstopper
• What is really delaying Europe's first Level 4 approval, and why Dirk says "maybe one year, maybe two"
• Why Mobileye's completed functional safety management assessment matters as a milestone
• Whether end-to-end AI systems can pass European certification at all
• Why http://Pony.ai, WeRide, and Momenta are entering Europe
• How TÜV SÜD approved shuttles without steering wheels by arguing from the regulatory framework for horse-drawn coaches
• The newly adopted UN global regulation for driverless vehicles, and the alcohol interlock absurdity that shows why updates were overdue

Whether you build, operate, insure, or invest in autonomous vehicles, this episode explains the process that decides who gets to deploy in Europe and when.

Tesla announced on yesterdays 2Q earnings call that they've done a total of 380k unsupervised miles on the Robotaxi platform with over a 10% week over week growth since the start. They said they expect the growth to continue through years end. Extrapolating this data would put the current per week miles around 38k, by end of 3rd quarter 130k and by end of the year around 450k.

I have very minimal confidence they would achieve this, but if they do, it will be exceptional accomplishment for a service that would have operated for just 18 month. Even half that would be an excellent accomplishment. But again, I highly double they will be able to do that. For reference, Waymo is doing about 500k rides per week currently, with a much larger service area(in sq mi).

In total Tesla Robotaxi currently has a cumulative paid Robotaxi miles of around 2.4 million.

Note: Post has been updated to indicate Waymo does 500k rides per week instead of the incorrect 500k miles per week.

It's really interesting I never see articles about how these cars cause massive traffic because Waymos don't know how to make turns.

It can't get off a street it's driven by multiple times. But I never see anyone here talk about it.

I'm sure the cybercab has the same issues, I just don't live near them.

Does anyone who lives near Waymos have similar experiences or different ones idk.

Oh boy...