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GM's self-driving unit is close to receiving a $2.25 billion boost
It took more than a year, but GM's self-driving company is close to receiving a giant cash infusion. Cruise Automation confirmed to Reuters that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) had approved SoftBank's $2.25 billion investment in the driverless tech company. SoftBank will have a spot on Cruise's board as a result of the deal. However, a Reuters source claimed that SoftBank wouldn't have access to the technology itself -- a condition CFIUS reportedly set out over concerns that the Japanese firm's investments in Chinese tech would compromise American trade secrets.
Waymo's self-driving cars needed a lot less human intervention in 2018
Waymo likes to boast that its self-driving cars can handle tough situations, and now it has some extra data to back up its claims. The California DMV has published manufacturers' reports for autonomous vehicle disengagements (moments when a human had to intervene), and Waymo's disengagement rate fell in 2018 to 0.09 for every 1,000 driverless miles -- that's half as many instances as in 2017. To Waymo, that's evidence the cars are better at dealing with "edge cases," those once-in-a-lifetime situations that used to require human adaptability.
