The founders of the former self-driving unit of Ford and Volkswagen are launching a new autonomous trucking startup with backing said to be more than $1 billion from SoftBank Group. The new firm, named Stack AV, is led by Bryan Salesky, Pete Rander and Brett Browning, who previously ran Argo AI, the self-driving operation that Ford and VW shut down last year. Based in Pittsburgh, which was also home to Argo, Stack AV has hired 150 people and already has a test fleet of trucks on the road, Salesky said in an interview. While Salesky and SoftBank declined to detail the investment in Stack, Matt Smith, an economic development official in Pittsburgh, said he expects the commitment to be "north of $1 billion," adding to a growing tech corridor in the city known as Robotics Row.

For over a decade, companies from Google to General Motors have poured billions of dollars into the pursuit of what was seen as the Holy Grail of driving technology: the fully self-driving car. Such vehicles would usher in an era of consumer safety and convenience, experts promised, and would be an immensely valuable product for carmakers. But recently many of the main players in the autonomous vehicle game have been scaling back or outright abandoning their lofty ambitions. Last week Ford and Volkswagen pulled the plug on their self-driving effort, Argo AI, the latest admission from a hype-fueled industry that building a good self-driving car that's also a profitable business may not happen anytime soon. Argo AI CEO and co-founder Bryan Salesky was part of a famed Carnegie Mellon University team that developed a primitive self-driving vehicle that won a Pentagon race in 2007.

Volkswagen will start testing its new autonomous vehicles in Germany this summer, the company announced Wednesday. The German automaker's electric ID Buzz vans will use hardware and software developed by Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based startup that is backed by Ford and VW. The aim is to launch a commercial delivery and micro-transit service in Germany by 2025. Executives from VW and Argo convened a press conference this week to provide an update on their partnership, which was first announced in 2019 as an extension of VW's "global alliance" with Ford. And while much of what they discussed was already known, it did provide a closer look at the timeline for launching a revenue-generating service using VW's vehicles and Argo's autonomous technology.

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. 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. "There are so many applications and businesses to be built, and (try to) understand which ones are more profitable than others."

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.

Twelve years later, even some of his former Carnegie Mellon University teammates have become business competitors of Salesky, who with CMU alumnus and faculty adviser Peter Rander founded Argo AI and went on to attract substantial investments from Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE). At the 2007 self-driving competition staged by DoD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in remote Victorville, California, Salesky's CMU team and one from rival Stanford University included the future founders of at least four self-driving startups. Those competitors were Chris Urmson and Drew Bagnell of self-driving vehicle startup Aurora, Dave Ferguson of Nuro, Apex.ai's Jan Becker and Anthony Levandowski of Pronto.ai. Sebastian Thrun, who with Levandowski and Urmson helped build Google's self-driving business, also participated in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, as did Dmitri Dolgov, who now heads engineering at Google's self-driving spinout Waymo.

Automakers and technology companies continue to push toward introduction of the first fleets of fully self-driving vehicles. But building trust in the robotic vehicles is proving just as important as getting the cars to navigate roadways without a human driver. Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Google's self-driving affiliate Waymo LLC and a number of other companies have spent billions and taken more than a decade to develop technology capable of hauling people or goods without a human in the driver's seat. GM plans to launch a fleet this year, Ford by 2021. Waymo started a small service in Phoenix late last year. Yet, GM ran into opposition to its petition to federal regulators for permission to put up to 5,000 driverless cars -- without steering wheels or control pedals -- on public roads.

The company, Argo AI, has since grown to about 330 employees, in part by luring away software engineers and robotics researchers from Apple Inc., Uber Technologies Inc. and other tech companies. Ford, which holds a majority stake in the company, is banking on Argo to help it catch up in the race to build driverless cars. "Every employee is an owner," said Argo Chief Executive Bryan Salesky. "They're able to benefit from the upside being created in a direct way. That can't be offered with a large company where the stock goes up and down with earnings."

In the spring of that year, the good Swedes at Volvo introduced Drive Me, a program to get regular Josefs, Frejas, Joeys, and Fayes into autonomous vehicles. By 2017, Volvo executives promised, the company would distribute 100 self-driving SUVs to families in Gothenburg, Sweden. The cars would be able to ferry their passengers through at least 30 miles of local roads, in everyday driving conditions--all on their own. "The technology, which will be called Autopilot, enables the driver to hand over the driving to the vehicle, which takes care of all driving functions," said Erik Coelingh, a technical lead at Volvo. Now, in the waning weeks of 2017, Volvo has pushed back its plans.

In the spring of that year, the good Swedes at Volvo introduced Drive Me, a program to get regular Josefs, Frejas, Joeys, and Fayes into autonomous vehicles. By 2017, Volvo executives promised, the company would distribute 100 self-driving SUVs to families in Gothenburg, Sweden. The cars would be able to ferry their passengers through at least 30 miles of local roads, in everyday driving conditions--all on their own. "The technology, which will be called Autopilot, enables the driver to hand over the driving to the vehicle, which takes care of all driving functions," said Erik Coelingh, a technical lead at Volvo. Now, in the waning weeks of 2017, Volvo has pushed back its plans.