By Abhirup Roy
Publication Date: 2026-01-09 11:01:00
By Abhirup Roy
LAS VEGAS, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The short history of the self-driving car industry has been littered with expensive failures and endless delays, but tech suppliers, chipmakers including Nvidia and some automakers are betting on AI and a web of partnerships to spark new progress.
Many interested automakers, however, still have major questions. Apart from concerns about high costs and scalability, they want to know if there is enough customer demand to make money out of an expensive wager.
Vehicles that drive themselves would change the transportation landscape, but making such a technology safe for public roads has been harder and much more expensive than expected.
While a few companies such as Alphabet’s Waymo and Tesla have decided to do it themselves, veterans such as General Motors and Ford Motor have abandoned their in-house efforts for fully autonomous vehicles.
At the CES show in Las Vegas this week, AWS and German supplier Aumovio announced a deal to support the commercial rollout of self-driving vehicles, while autonomous truck firm Kodiak AI and Bosch said they have partnered to ramp up manufacturing of autonomous trucking hardware and sensors. AI chip company Nvidia rolled out its next-generation platform which will be used in a robotaxi alliance announced by Lucid Group, Nuro and Uber.
Powered by Nvidia’s chips, Mercedes-Benz said this week it will launch a new advanced…
