"It brings accountability to the industry," says Raquel Urtasun, Waabi's firebrand founder and CEO (who is also a professor at the University of Toronto). "There are no more excuses." After quitting Uber, where she led the ride-sharing firm's driverless-car division, Urtasun founded Waabi in 2021 with a different vision for how autonomous vehicles should be made. The firm, which has partnerships with Uber Freight and Volvo, has been running real trucks on real roads in Texas since 2023, but it carries out the majority of its development inside a simulation called Waabi World. Waabi is now taking its sim-first approach to the next level, using Waabi World not only to train and test its driving models but to prove their real-world safety.

Elon Musk's grand plan of moving beyond passenger cars to truly revolutionize transportation just got a bit grander. In addition to developing an electric 18-wheeler that Tesla plans to unveil next month, Musk wants to make the thing drive itself. Tesla is working with Nevada authorities to begin testing a robo-rig prototype at some point in the not-too-distant future. "Our primary goal is the ability to operate our prototype test trucks in a continuous manner across the state line and within the States of Nevada and California in a platooning and/or Autonomous mode without having a person in the vehicle," Tesla's Nasser Zamani told officials with the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, according to Reuters. Assuming Tesla can figure out how to make battery tech work for long-haul trucking (no easy feat), adding autonomy to the equation makes perfect sense.

The Uber-owned self-driving truck startup hopes to market an aftermarket kit that will provide Level 4 autonomy – meaning a truck driver could nap while his rig barrels down the road. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. The Uber-owned self-driving truck startup hopes to market an aftermarket kit that will provide Level 4 autonomy – meaning a truck driver could nap while his rig barrels down the road.