Volkswagen challenges Waymo with launch of electric ID. Buzz autonomous robotaxi fleet in Los Angeles
MOIA is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group that focuses on developing shared transportation services, particularly on-demand shuttles. It has announced the upcoming launch of a robotaxi service consisting of a fleet of ID. Buzz AD vehicles.
The ID. Buzz AD is an electric van equipped with Mobileye technology, which includes cameras, radars and LiDAR sensors. The vehicle thus has precise 360-degree vision for up to 400 meters. Volkswagen promises level 4 autonomous driving capabilities, meaning that no human intervention is required.
The first vehicles are set to enter the testing phase in Los Angeles at the end of 2025, with at least one safety operator on board. A commercial launch is planned for 2026. A roll-out in Europe is also planned, probably in Germany to start with.
With the goal of deploying thousands of robotaxis in major US cities, Volkswagen is stepping on Waymo's toes, taking advantage of legislation favourable to the commercial operation of fully autonomous fleets. Waymo currently operates around 1,500 autonomous taxis in the United States, spread across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin. The company plans to add 2,000 more by the end of 2026, notably by expanding its service to cities such as Atlanta, Miami and New York. — ETX Studio
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
3 hours ago
- The Star
AI agent startup TinyFish raises $47 million in ICONIQ-led round
Words reading "Artificial intelligence", miniature of robot and toy hand are pictured in this illustration taken December 14, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo (Reuters) -AI startup TinyFish has raised $47 million in a Series A funding round led by ICONIQ Capital to scale its platform for building and deploying AI-powered web agents, the company told Reuters. The round included participation from USVP, MongoDB Ventures and Sheryl Sandberg's Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners. The company plans to use the capital to invest in products and expand its go-to-market operations. Founded in 2024, TinyFish is building web-based agents to automate repetitive and complex online tasks for enterprises. Its technology simulates human-like browsing to perform actions and gather data at a massive scale. The company is initially focusing on the retail and travel sectors. Its primary use cases include dynamic price surveillance, where AI bots track prices, promotions, shipping times, and inventory levels across competitor websites in real-time. These tasks were traditionally handled by large, offshore teams performing manual data entry or by custom software scripts that would often break when a website's design changed. Palo Alto, California-based TinyFish has a team of about 25 people. The new funding provides TinyFish with a runway of three to four years, according to CEO Sudheesh Nair. The AI agent space is experiencing a gold rush, with a flurry of offerings onautonomous software. Big tech companies and startups are racing to capitalize on the shift from static large language models (LLMs) to dynamic agents capable of performing complex, multi-step tasks. TinyFish says its technology could help solve the problem of efficiently and reliably gathering critical data from the dynamic and messy environment of the internet. "If you can turn the internet into analyzable data, it will fundamentally give businesses advantages that others don't have," Nair told Reuters, adding that the goal is to help businesses "make more money," not just save on costs. Its system uses advanced AI models for reasoning and exploration, and then codifies that knowledge for high-speed, deterministic execution at scale, according to Nair. Amit Agarwal, partner at ICONIQ, said the decision to invest was driven by TinyFish's success with early pilot customers, including tech giant Google. "They had operationalized it, productionized it at a very large scale for two large-scale customers who have all the development resources in-house to build these types of things themselves," Agarwal said. (Reporting by Krystal Hu; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Free Malaysia Today
6 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
US budget deficit to be US$1tril higher over next decade, says watchdog
The new estimate from the committee for a responsible federal budget includes the budget effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and US tariffs. (AP pic) WASHINGTON : US federal budget deficits will be nearly US$1 trillion higher over the next decade than projected in January by the congressional budget office (CBO) as a result of tax and spending legislation and tariffs, a budget watchdog said today. The committee for a responsible federal budget's (CRFB) latest forecasts show a cumulative deficit of US$22.7 trillion from fiscal 2026 to 2035, compared to the CBO's January forecast of US$21.8 trillion, which was based on laws and policies that were in place before US President Donald Trump took office in January. The CBO, Congress's non-partisan budget referee agency, said on Monday that it will not issue its customary mid-year budget update this year and will issue its next 10-year budget and economic outlook in early 2026, offering no explanation for the move. The CRFB, which advocates for deficit reduction, projected a US$1.7 trillion deficit in fiscal 2025 or 5.6% of GDP, down slightly from US$1.83 trillion in 2024 and the CBO's 2025 projection of US$1.87 trillion in January. However, it said deficits steadily rise over the decade, reaching US$2.6 trillion or 5.9% of GDP by 2035. The new CRFB estimates include the budget effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending bill, as well as Trump's tariffs that are currently in place. However, like CBO, they do not include the dynamic economic effects on growth from these changes, a forecasting rule that has drawn criticism from the Trump administration. The group projects the tax cut and spending bill to increase deficits, including interest, by US$4.6 trillion through 2035, adding another year to the CBO's US$4.1 trillion cost estimate through 2034. However, CRFB estimates that this will be offset by US$3.4 trillion worth of extra import duty revenue over the next decade due to Trump's new tariffs that are currently in place. 'New rules restricting eligibility for health insurance subsidies will reduce deficits by another US$100 billion through 2035, and Congress' rescission of prior funding to foreign aid, public broadcasting and other programmes would save another US$100 billion if sustained over a decade,' CRFB said. Net interest payments on the national debt will total US$14 trillion over the decade, CRFB projected, rising from nearly US$1 trillion or 3.2% of GDP in 2025 to US$1.8 trillion or 4.1% of GDP in 2035. Tariff challenge The forecasts are based on legislative and tariff changes since January but keep CBO's economic forecasts unchanged. Under an alternative scenario forecast by CRFB, the budget picture looks far worse, boosting deficits nearly US$7 trillion higher than the CBO baseline. This scenario would see a significant part of Trump's tariffs canceled if the court of international trade's ruling against many of Trump's new tariffs is upheld, cutting US$2.4 trillion from revenues over a decade. The alternative scenario also assumes extension of a number of temporary tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including tax breaks on overtime, tips, Social Security income and car loan interest, higher state and local tax deduction allowances and full expensing of factory investments, adding US$1.7 trillion to deficits over 10 years. CRFB's alternative scenario also ditches the CBO's projection of a decline in 10-year US treasury yields over the decade to about 3.8%. 'If that interest rate stays at the current level of about 4.3%, interest costs would grow by about US$1.6 trillion through 2035,' CRFB said. The total 2035 debt-to-GDP ratio would grow from 118% in the CBO January baseline to 120% under the CRFB's projected baseline scenario and 134% under the CRFB's alternative scenario.
Free Malaysia Today
10 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
US dollar strengthens ahead of Jackson Hole meet
The US dollar index added 0.1% to 98.438, its highest since Aug 12. (Reuters pic) TOKYO : The US dollar gained for a third straight session today as traders awaited the Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole symposium this week for clues on the path of monetary policy. The New Zealand dollar tumbled after the Reserve Bank said its board also considered a half-point cut in deciding to reduce the cash rate by a quarter point. The kiwi slumped as much as 0.9% to US$0.5841, its lowest since April 14. The US dollar index, which measures the currency against six major counterparts, added 0.1% to 98.438, its highest since Aug 12. In the first two days of this week, it gained about 0.4%. Friday's speech by Fed chair Jerome Powell is the market's main focus, as traders watch for any pushback against market pricing of a rate reduction next month. Traders now place odds of 84% on such a cut, and expect about 54 basis points of reduction by year-end. 'Given the relatively high bar for Powell to meet, there's a bit of risk being baked into the markets that he leans to the hawkish side and the proverbial rug gets pulled from beneath investors,' said Kyle Rodda, an analyst at Traders, who ramped up bets for a Fed cut on Sept 17 after a surprisingly weak payrolls report at the start of this month, were further encouraged after consumer price data showed limited upward pressure from tariffs. However, a hotter-than-expected producer price reading last week complicated the policy picture. Powell has said he is reluctant to cut rates because of expected tariff-driven price pressures this summer. Later today, the Fed will issue the minutes of its meeting on July 29 and 30, when it held rates steady, although they may offer limited insight as the meeting came before the weak jobs numbers. The US dollar advanced 0.1% to CHF0.80885, though it edged slightly lower to Japanese yen at ¥147.56. The euro eased 0.2% to US$1.1626, and sterling slipped 0.2% to US$1.3463. Australia's dollar declined 0.3% to US$0.6435, its weakest since Aug 1.
