TechCrunch Mobility: A new, bigger AV boom is here
There's a claim baked into that headline I want to poke at: "bigger." We've heard the AV boom story before, back when robotaxi startups were raising nine-figure rounds and promising to replace drivers within a couple of years. Most of those promises got quietly walked back. So when someone says a new boom is here, my first question is what's actually changed on the ground, not in the pitch deck.
The interesting shift is the AI angle. The last boom was mostly about sensors, mapping, and rule-based decision stacks. This one seems to hinge on foundation models and end-to-end learning, which could genuinely change the economics of the problem. That's worth paying attention to. But I'd want to see more than funding numbers. I'd want deployment stats, safety data, and whether the cost per mile is finally moving in the right direction.
I'm cautiously interested. The technology has gotten better, that's real. But "bigger boom" can mean bigger hype too, and we've been burned by that before. I'll believe it when the robots are actually carrying passengers at scale, not just when the funding announcements pile up.