Waymo (GOOGL) cars were torched over the weekend during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles — and the company is looking for someone to clean up the proverbial mess.
Category: robotaxi
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Tesla’s make-or-break robotaxi moment is here. Can Elon Musk deliver?
Elon Musk has been promising robotaxis since at least 2016. Back then, the idea sounded like a bit like science fiction, and Musk’s timeline was — as ever — aggressively optimistic. Nearly a decade later, fiction is expected to finally become fact: On June 12, Tesla (TSLA) is expected to show off its first real…
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Cathie Wood on what Trump and Elon Musk’s feud reveals
The clash between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump isn’t just political theater; it’s a look into how deeply Musk’s empire depends upon the U.S. government, according to a top investor. Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood says investors are waking up to the extent of this reliance amid the escalating spat.
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Baidu’s AI cloud soars — but the risks are stacking up
China’s biggest AI player, Baidu (BIDU), beat expectations with a surge in cloud revenue, but its ad business is shrinking, it’s slashing AI prices to stay ahead of local rivals, and fresh U.S. chip export issues could cut its momentum short.
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Tesla required leased cars be returned for robotaxi program — but resold them instead
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Waymo recalls 1,200 self-driving cars because of minor collisions
Waymo is recalling about1,200 vehicles due to a software bug that caused its self-driving cars to collide with certain roadway barriers, according to safety officials.
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USPTO refuses Tesla Robotaxi trademark as “merely descriptive”
“We are an AI, robotics company,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last April. Despite the fact that the company’s revenues are overwhelmingly derived from selling new electric vehicles, such prosaic activities hold no luster for the boss. Instead, Tesla’s future, according to Musk, depends upon a (claimed) sub-$30,000 driverless two-seater, revealed to the world last October in a staged demonstration on a film set. But Musk’s plans just hit a snag: The company must find some new names.
As spotted by Sean O’Kane at TechCrunch, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has informed Tesla that it will not be allowed to trademark the word “robotaxi” to describe the vehicle. According to the USPTO, the term is far too generic. Indeed, a Google n-gram search shows a steady growth in the use of “robotaxi” starting more than a decade ago.
According to the USPTO, the term is merely descriptive. The agency cites evidence from Wikipedia, The Verge, and the Amazon-backed autonomous vehicle startup Zoox in its denial of Tesla’s trademark application.
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Tesla keeps hitting robotaxi roadblocks
One of the most important branding decisions a company can make about its product is the name. It needs to be catchy and descriptive. But when trademarking, it also can’t be “generic,” according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which rebuffed Tesla’s (TSLA) application to trademark the term “robotaxi” for its…
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Google’s Waymo is getting ready to put a lot more robotaxis on the street
Waymo (GOOGL), the self-driving car division of Google parent Alphabet, is preparing to scale up its manufacturing facility in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Arizona.
