Anyone want to buy a car that drives itself?

"Earlier this year, a mysterious new company called Tensor announced itself to the world by claiming it would be the first to sell fully autonomous vehicles to customers at scale. The news didn't make much of a splash. No one had ever heard of Tensor, so it was the kind of announcement easy to dismiss as vaporware. But the idea was not unfamiliar."

"But it won't be easy. The technological and legal hurdles are immense. Today's robotaxis are restricted in where they can travel and under what conditions; it's unclear whether people would accept similar limitations for a vehicle they owned. And mishaps, like driving through an active police scene as Waymo recently did, becomes even more alarming when it's a privately owned vehicle."

"Instead, fleet-owned robotaxis were the safer bet, helping amortize the costs of all the sensors and high-powered computing - said to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - needed to enable the cars to drive themselves. But now the costs for much of that equipment, including lidar, is coming down, resurfacing the idea that autonomous vehicles can be cheap enough to sell to regular people."

Tensor claimed plans to sell fully autonomous vehicles to consumers at scale, joining other companies pursuing privately owned driverless cars. Current robotaxis operate with geographic and condition limits, and private ownership would raise safety and legal concerns when mishaps occur. High sensor and computing costs historically favored fleet models to amortize expenses. Declining prices for components such as lidar are lowering barriers, renewing the prospect of affordable consumer autonomous cars. Major firms including Waymo, Tesla, Lucid, and General Motors, along with smaller entrants spun out of robotaxi operators, are exploring this emerging market amid unresolved practical and regulatory challenges.

Read at The Verge