What We’re Reading

In the wake of surprising news that Argo AI is shutting down, we are expanding our headline coverage this week and dedicating the post to various viewpoints on the future of autonomy.

• Ford, VW-backed Argo AI is shutting down (TechCrunch, October 26, 2022)

  Argo AI unexpectedly announced last week that it will wind down its operations, which began in earnest in 2017 following major investments from Ford and VW. Since that time, Ford and VW together have contributed significantly to the billions of dollars Argo AI has raised. The two OEMs reportedly will absorb some of Argo AI’s employees and technology, although the distribution remains unclear.

  Argo AI explained the decision to shut down in a public statement, saying : “In coordination with our shareholders, the decision has been made that Argo AI will not continue on its mission as a company. Many of the employees will receive an opportunity to continue work on automated driving technology with either Ford or Volkswagen, while employment for others will unfortunately come to an end.” Industry insiders believe the decision was “fueled by Argo’s inability to attract new investors,” and failure to deliver on promises to bring AV technology to the market by 2021.

  For its part, Ford has committed to refocusing efforts on safer L2+ and L3 ADAS technologies, which its CEO, Jim Farley, characterized as “mission critical.” While Farley did not entirely dismiss the possibility of fully autonomous vehicles in Ford’s future, he added that such technology “at scale [is] a long way off and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology ourselves.”

  VW plans to shift focus as well, using “its software unit Cariad to drive forward development of highly automated and autonomous driving together with Bosch and, in the future, in China with Horizon Robotics.”

• Ford Abandons the Self-Driving Road to Nowhere (Wired, October 28, 2022)

  Some view the shuttering of Argo AI as “the latest sign that the global effort to get cars to drive themselves is in trouble—or at least more complex than once thought.” Ford’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the venture support this view. Ford’s CFO added to CEO Farley’s comments, saying “the math of Argo, which took in more than $3 billion during its brief life, just didn’t add up. [Ford] calculated it would be five years or more ‘before you could actually get something that started to generate a meaningful business.’”

  The industry shift away from autonomous and toward better driver-assist features is evident not just in Ford and VW’s pivot, but also arguably in the recent IPO of Mobileye, a manufacturer of cameras, chips, and software that are largely used for driver assistance.

  But not all industry participants are sounding the death knell for autonomy. The CEO of GM, for example, remarked on an investor call that “[w]e’re seeing increased separation between the companies operating commercial driverless services and those that are still stuck in the ‘trough of disillusionment.’” Waymo, too, still plans to begin testing its robotaxis in LA.

• The automaker path to autonomous cars has changed (Axios, October 28, 2022)

  Offering somewhat of a counter-point opinion, this author rejects the idea that “self-driving cars will never materialize,” predicting that they will be “widely available” in her lifetime.

  She notes that the technology still matters, in that it has tremendous safety and accessibility benefits. While she acknowledges that investments will likely slow and many OEMs are pivoting to an “interim strategy of equipping cars with partial automation to handle the wort aspects of driving” (which is also cheaper), she points to several automakers including Ford and Tesla that already offer “hands free” technology in limited circumstances, and the many companies who are still pursuing self-driving technology unflinchingly.

  As Aurora’s CEO, Chris Urmson, commented, “[w]hat we’re seeing now is much like what happened to the automobile industry. …  At the beginning of the 20th century, there were over 250 manufacturers. By the 1930s, there were only three. This doesn't mean the industry was a failure—it means it was an incredibly lucrative opportunity that attracted a lot of competition but was also extremely challenging.”

• Robotaxis Are More Than a Decade Away, Says Luminar’s CEO Austin Russell (TIME, October 30, 2022)

  Austin Russell, who became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2020, founded his LiDAR company Luminar on the gamble that “getting rid of drivers would be harder than people realized,” despite all of the hype around autonomous driving. Based on the headlines splashed across media channels for the last week, including those captured here, it appears that Russell bet wisely.

  In this interview with TIME, Russell explains why he’s an “autonomous vehicle skeptic,” and responds to Elon Musk’s “contrarian” view that LiDAR is unnecessary to achieve full self-driving. And if you’re betting with Russell, he predicts self-driving robotaxis will not be available “at any appreciable scale” until “well into the 2030s.”