Disaster response an'urgent issue,' says new land minister Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Tatsunori Ibayashi answers questions during an interview in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Wednesday. New Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Tatsunori Ibayashi on Wednesday pledged to respond to heavy rain and other natural disasters with a sense of urgency. Disaster response is an "urgent issue," Ibayashi said in an interview with media organizations, adding that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has strongly instructed Cabinet ministers to prioritize countermeasures. Large-scale natural disasters, including Typhoon Dujuan, have caused significant damage recently in Japan, he said. "The types of disasters have diversified considerably."

Wayve's self-driving technology is based on an AI learning model rather than the mapping used by some rivals. Wayve's self-driving technology is based on an AI learning model rather than the mapping used by some rivals. London's first self-driving taxis for hire hit the streets Londoners are now able to hire self-driving taxis for the first time, after rides in Wayve's autonomous vehicles were added to the Uber app on Thursday. The chances of landing a robotaxi on request immediately are slim, with only 15 vehicles so far licensed. That contrasts with the more than 100,000 private hire vehicles in the capital - roughly the same number of Uber customers who have registered to take autonomous rides.

Image caption, Elon Musk has repeatedly boasted of Tesla's self-driving capabilities. Jennifer Barbour filed her lawsuit in a local court on Tuesday, just days after her 76-year-old mother Martha Avila died from injuries she sustained after a Tesla Model 3 sped into their shared home . The Tesla driver told police that he was using the car's autonomous or full self-driving technology at the time of the crash. In the lawsuit Barbour accuses Elon Musk's electric vehicle company of defective design and negligence by promoting technology that is unsafe, while Musk on social media denied the technology was to blame. Tesla was approached for comment.

California regulators are threatening to suspend Tesla's licence to sell its electric cars in the state early next year unless the car maker tones down its marketing tactics for its self-driving features after a judge concluded that the Elon Musk-led company has been misleading consumers about the technology's capabilities. The potential 30-day blackout of Tesla's sales in California in the United States is the primary punishment being recommended to the state's Department of Motor Vehicles in a decision released late on Tuesday. After presiding over five days of hearings held in Oakland, California, in July, Cox also recommended suspending Tesla's licence to manufacture cars at its plant in Fremont, California. But California regulators will not impose that part of the judge's proposed penalty. Tesla will have a 90-day window to make changes that more clearly convey the limits of its self-driving technology to avoid having its California sales licence suspended.

Uber will invest 300m in electric vehicle maker Lucid in a robotaxi deal that aims to start with one major US city late next year. The two companies announced the new partnership on Thursday. Over six years starting in 2026, Uber will acquire and deploy over 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs that will be equipped with autonomous vehicle (AV) technology from startup Nuro, the three companies said in a statement. The agreement illustrates the renewed plans and push for financing for self-driving cabs, years after a first wave of autonomous driving investment produced only a limited number of vehicles. Tesla has recently launched a robotaxi trial in Austin, and Alphabet's driverless taxi unit, Waymo, is speeding up its expansion.

Electric carmaker Tesla has settled a lawsuit brought by the family of an Apple engineer who was killed when his Model X swerved off a California highway while on autopilot. Tesla settled with the family of Wei Lun Huang in the wrongful death suit they filed over the crash in Mountain View, California in 2018, court filings showed on Monday. The settlement means that Tesla will avoid a jury trial that would have focused scrutiny on its self-driving technology months ahead of the scheduled launch of its self-driving Robotaxi in August. The amount Tesla paid to settle the case was not disclosed in court documents after the company asked that it remain under seal. Huang's family filed a negligence and wrongful death lawsuit in 2019 accusing Tesla of liability due to exaggerated claims about the firm's self-driving technology.

Kyle Vogt, CEO of self-driving car developer Cruise and who founded the company before its acquisition by General Motors in 2016, resigned this evening. His announcement comes amidst upheaval at the company which last month had its permit to operate its groundbreaking robotaxi service in San Francisco suspended by state regulators. "The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we've proven there is something far better around the corner," Vogt wrote in a message to Cruise workers posted on X. He did not refer to the company's recent troubles. Cruise's crisis began on the night of October 2 in San Francisco when a human driver struck a pedestrian and threw her into the path of one of the company's driverless robotaxis.

Traffic deaths have been tumbling across the rich world, with Japan and Norway among the countries recently reaching postwar lows. The notable outlier is the United States. American crash fatalities hit a 16-year high in 2021 before barely budging last year. An American is now two to five times more likely to die in a collision than citizens of peer nations. Those expressing concern about this trend include Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who has called it "a national crisis"), roadway safety advocates, and newspaper editorial pages.

Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, have been a topic of interest for many decades. The idea of a car that can drive itself has been a futuristic dream for many people, but it wasn't until recently that the technology to make it a reality began to develop. In the early 2000s, self-driving cars were still in the experimental stages, with most of the focus being on developing sensors and software that could accurately detect and respond to road conditions. One of the first notable examples of self-driving technology came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the United States, which held a series of competitions in which teams of engineers and computer scientists would create autonomous vehicles that could navigate a set course. By the mid-2010s, self-driving technology had advanced significantly, with companies like Google, Tesla, and Uber investing heavily in the development of autonomous vehicles.

Aurora (Nasdaq: AUR) is delivering the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. Founded in 2017 by experts in the self-driving industry, Aurora is revolutionizing transportation – making it safer, increasingly accessible, and more reliable and efficient than ever before. Its flagship product, the Aurora Driver, is a platform that brings together software, hardware, and data services, to autonomously operate passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and heavy-duty trucks. Aurora is partnered with industry leaders across the transportation ecosystem including Toyota, Volvo, PACCAR, Uber, Uber Freight, FedEx, and U.S. Xpress. Aurora tests its vehicles in the Bay Area, Pittsburgh, and Texas and has offices in those areas as well as in Bozeman, MT; Seattle, WA; Louisville, CO; and Detroit, MI.