Argo takes different road to skirt self-driving challenges - Reuters

PITTSBURGH/DETROIT (Reuters) - Sky's the limit optimism about self-driving cars is giving way to tougher questions about how expensive automotive artificial intelligence will ever make a profit. Those are questions the founders of Argo AI - and automaker partners Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) - are betting they can answer by taking a different road than more highly valued rivals. They are steering away from building a robotaxi fleet and focusing instead on getting paid by the mile by customers that will use robot vehicles for multiple purposes, including delivering goods or transporting groups of people in vans. The self-driving systems developer led by Bryan Salesky, who got his start developing automated vehicles for a Defense Department sponsored competition 12 years ago, is at the center of a multibillion-dollar bet by its auto giant partners that autonomous vehicle technology must be good for more than replacing taxi drivers. "I hate the word robotaxi," Salesky said in a rare interview at Argo's Pittsburgh headquarters.