Waymo, Aurora, UPS and Luminar are among a group of 34 autonomous vehicle developers, California business organizations, and automotive and logistics companies that have signed an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom asking him to revisit the California Department of Motor Vehicles’s 2015 prohibition on the operation of autonomous trucks in the state.
California began regulating autonomous vehicles in 2012, and has been the key battleground state for robotaxi operations. Late last week, Cruise began charging for fully driverless rides, and Waymo recently opened up driverless testing for employees in San Francisco. Despite opening up AV regulations to larger AVs for the purposes of delivery in 2019, the DMV’s regulations continue to exclude autonomous testing or deployment of vehicles weighing more than 10,001 pounds.
Texas, the state that’s getting all of Silicon Valley’s tax refugees, has been home to most of the nation’s autonomous trucking operations, with companies like Waymo Via, Aurora, Kodiak Robotics, TuSimple and more either testing or operating commercial partnerships. Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nevada and Colorado also have testing and deployment regulations for autonomous trucks.
California has …
