The promise of a truly self-driving car is closer than ever, especially if it’s an autonomous taxi. You can already hail a Waymo in multiple U.S. cities, a Tesla Robotaxi in Austin, Texas, and any number of autonomous taxis in cities across China. Now, a former robotaxi operator in China wants to sell you your very own private Waymo. It’s called the Tensor Robocar.
10 Years in the Making
Tensor was founded in Silicon Valley as AutoX back in 2016 and focused on building autonomous commercial vehicles and robotaxis. The company began testing autonomous vehicles in California and China the next year and, during the COVID pandemic, moved to China full time and built a fleet of more than 1,000 autonomous taxis giving rides to the public in five cities.
In the past year, though, the company completely divested from its Chinese operations due to data privacy concerns, according to head of marketing, Amy Luca. It rebranded as Tensor, returned to San Jose, California, and shifted its focus to building a truly autonomous vehicle for private customers rather than corporate fleets.
At its core, the Robocar is your typical EV with a 112-kWh battery and 250 miles of estimated range. It currently features a single rear motor of unspecified output, and without knowing the curb weight, we can’t estimate performance. Tensor says its 845-volt battery pack will fast-charge from 10 to 80 percent in just 20 minutes. The company is also trying to develop an automated charger with a robotic arm that will plug in the car for you when you get home.
In the meantime, you won’t have to worry about opening and closing your doors, either, because the coach-style center-closing doors are all powered and fitted with sensors to prevent them from banging into other cars or obstacles.
Actual Autonomous Vehicle
Tensor bills the Robocar as an SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicle, which means it can drive itself without a human aboard but still has a steering wheel and pedals for manual operation. In many ways, it’s very similar to a Waymo autonomous taxi, except you can own it and park it in your own driveway (or have it park itself).
This level of capability is far beyond what Tesla is currently offering with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) technology, which is currently the most capable system a private person can buy in America but which still requires a person in the driver’s seat, paying attention to the road, and ready to take over at any time. To achieve this, Tensor designed the entire car from the ground up to be an autonomous vehicle rather than modifying an existing vehicle. Development began in 2020, shortly after the autonomous taxi service launched in China.
Making it truly autonomous requires an enormous number of sensors and a lot of computing power. Tensor fits the Robocar with more than 100 sensors, including five lidar arrays (one on the roof and four around the front, sides, and back), 37 cameras, 11 radars, and 10 ultrasonic sensors. The rooftop lidar can see objects nearly 1,000 feet away, 360 degrees around the vehicle.
Keeping those sensors clean and able to see are 30 washer nozzles and 13 mini wipers, plus heating elements to prevent fogging and snow buildup. Tensor takes things a step further than Waymo’s Zeekr-based vehicle with physical covers that automatically close over the sensors when the vehicle is turned off, protecting them from damage and dirt.
All these sensors are controlled by a massive onboard computer featuring eight Nvidia Drive Thor-X chips capable of 8,000 TOPS (trillion operations per second). While the car is connected to the cloud, most computing is done in the vehicle so it can operate equally well when it can’t get a 5G signal. (Not for lack of trying, as the car has three redundant communication channels for maximum connectivity.) The Tensor Foundation Model software is AI-based and operates two systems in parallel, the first trained by professional drivers and the second trailed on a Visual Language Model (VLM) to solve unusual and unexpected edge cases. Tensor says it can operate in rain and snow, so you don’t have to live in California in order to use it.
Displays on the lower exterior corners of the vehicle will broadcast simple messages and pictograms to pedestrians to let people know the car is operating autonomously and it sees them.
Your Car, Your Data
Because all of the computing is done onboard, Tensor doesn’t need to collect data from your car. While it’s capable of sharing infor