New York governor Kathy Hochul says she will propose a new law allowing limited autonomous vehicle pilots in smaller cities. Full-blown services could be next. As self-driving car services from Alphabet's Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, and Tesla have slowly, quietly expanded across the US, one big, important state has mostly stayed mum: New York . The union's fourth most populous state has some of the tightest laws governing autonomous vehicles, requiring companies approved to test in the state to only do so with a driver behind the wheel. There's no current path for companies to operate the sort of commercial robotaxi services like the sort seen in San Francisco or Las Vegas.

SAIC Mobility Robotaxi, an arm of state-owned Chinese automaker SAIC that aims to launch a commercial robotaxi service, raised $148 million (RMB 1 billion). The funds will be used to scale its robotaxi service in China, which it will operate in partnership with autonomous vehicle company Momenta. SAIC Group led the Series B round that also saw participation from Momenta, Gaoheng Management Consulting and other institutions. The funding brought SAIC Mobility's total valuation to more than $1 billion, according to the company. The company's robotaxis are powered using Momenta's "Flywheel L4" technology, which is designed to use deep learning rather than a rules-based, machine learning approach.