Tesla’s valuation has been spectacular lately, closing at an all-time record of $489.88 earlier this month and still hovering pretty close to that astronomical figure as of this writing. Tesla bulls, notably Dan Ives of Wedbush capital, say this is because Tesla is on the verge of successfully deploying robotaxis, and that Tesla’s stock price could spike to $800 next year.
A New York Times report from Thursday reads like a valiant attempt to talk sanity into anyone who believes the Wedbush Tesla narrative. It’s not going to work, because Tesla is selling a pretty wild fantasy that isn’t mentioned in the Times’ piece.
Central to the Times’ report is the observation that in Austin, Tesla’s proof-of-concept city as a Robocar manufactuer-operator, an estimated 30 self-driving taxis have supposedly rolled onto the roads since June, an absolutely dismal number compared to Waymo’s 200 in the same city since March. The source the Times links to for the Tesla stat is a site called teslarobotaxitracker.com, which is run by an Austin-based robotaxi enthusiast named Ethan McKanna.
And the Times points out that each and every Tesla self-driving taxi with passengers in it still has a human safety monitor—while Waymo’s fleet is unsupervised—at least inside the car.
The Times is far from the first to claim that Waymo is way ahead of Tesla. Jeff Dean, the chief scientist at Google DeepMind—who shares a parent company, Alphabet, with Waymo, wrote on Twitter earlier this month, “I don’t think Tesla has anywhere near the volume of rider-only autonomous miles that Waymo has (96M for Waymo, as of today). The safety data is quite compelling for Waymo, as well.”
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, replied to Dean by making one of his famous outlandish predictions: “Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla. This will be obvious in hindsight.”
One issue with any Waymo-Tesla comparison right now, however, is that Waymo’s business is running into some major potholes, and they might be relevant. This past weekend, Waymo had to shut down its service in San Francisco when its vehicles faltered at dark stoplights. It turned out that Waymo’s lack of safety drivers might have contributed to the problem, since the motivation for the shutdown was a logjam caused by the Waymo software’s high volume of requests for human feedback.
But importantly, the bullish case for Tesla’s Robotaxi service doesn’t seem to be based on the existing ride-hailing service that relies on Model Y cars as autonomous taxis. It’s most likely based on the large scale rollout of a two-seater car without a steering wheel or pedals called the Cybercab that Elon Musk unveiled in 2024, and claimed will be available for purchase by the end of 2026.
The supposed silver bullet for Cybercabs is that people will ostensibly buy them, and use them for their own transportation needs, but at other times release them into the wild as robotic servants that make them passive, or passive-ish, income. This would benefit Tesla in theory because it would rely on the Tesla app ecosystem, and Tesla would get a cut, while the car owners have to deal with charging, maintenance, insurance, cleaning, and everything else that’s annoying about owning a car.
And we know Elon Musk has it in his head that he’s going to get something like a million Cybercabs onto the road—or at least some mix of hundreds of thousands of Model Y taxis alongside Cybercabs. We know this because if Tesla doesn’t deploy at least one million self-driving taxis, Elon Musk doesn’t get all of his notorious $1 trillion pay package.
The Times’s piece isn’t wrong to quote experts saying Tesla is “way behind Waymo.” But it includes passages like this that make near-religious faith in Tesla’s future revenue sound more mysterious than it is:
Some analysts also doubt whether driverless taxis will generate trillions of dollars of revenue, as Mr. Musk has predicted, or be very profitable. For revenue to even reach hundreds of billions of dollars, many people would have to give up their personal vehicles in favor of riding in taxis, which is unlikely anytime soon, said Michael Tyndall, an analyst at HSBC.
It’s not that the Times is comparing apples and oranges. It’s more like they’re comparing otherwise decent apples with worms in them to magical apples from a wizard who claims his apples can grant wishes, but no one can have one yet. It’s more dubious and fantastical than the extremely sane adults in the room are even letting on with their pleas for sanity. But hey, let’s all just wait and see what the wizard has in store for us.
In the 2016 press release that announced Waymo as “Google’s self-driving car project,” CEO John Krafcik wrote that “self-driving technology could be useful in ways the world has yet to imagine, creating many new types of products, jobs, and services.”
Nine years later, Waymo vehicles are on the roads, and while they obviously don’t create jobs for drivers, that press release was right about one thing: I never imagined that closing a car door for $22 would be a legitimate work gig, but it is now.
A Washington Post story on Thursday looks at tow truck operators who use an app called Honk to get paid to perform services for Waymo. One tow company owner, Evangelica Cuevas, describes a pretty bleak situation for herself and her drivers, being offered “$22 to $24” to close Waymo doors, and “$60 to $80” to tow them, perhaps because one ran out of juice while looking for a charger.
A University of Southern California data scientist named Georgios Petropoulos told the Post, “Humans are needed to interact with automated systems to make sure that service is provided in an efficient and safe way.”
And as the Post’s Lisa Bonos puts it: “The door-closing and towing gigs being picked up by Marenco and others in Los Angeles are examples of how as automation advances, it can create new work for humans pressed into service to patch over its shortcomings.”
Overall, it’s a disquieting vision of the future of work.
Waymo is shipping a software update to help its robotaxis navigate disabled traffic lights during power outages “more decisively,” the company said Tuesday in a blog post that explains why its self-driving vehicles got stuck at intersections during a blackout in San Francisco this past weekend.
Waymo said the self-driving system in its robotaxis treats dead stop lights as four-way stops, just like humans are supposed to. That should have allowed the robotaxis to operate normally in spite of the massive outage.
Instead, many of the vehicles requested a “confirmation check” from Waymo’s fleet response team to make sure what they were doing was correct. All Waymo robotaxis have the ability to make these confirmation checks. With such a widespread outage on Saturday, there was a “concentrated spike” in these confirmation requests, Waymo said, which helped create all the congestion caught on video.
Waymo said it built this confirmation request system “out of an abundance of caution during our early deployment” but that it is now refining it to “match our current scale.”
“While this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we are now implementing fleet-wide updates that provide the [self-driving software] with specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively,” the company wrote.
The software update will add “even more context about regional outages” to the company’s self-driving software. Waymo also said it will improve its emergency response protocols by “incorporating lessons from this event.”
While a lot of focus has been placed on the instances where Waymo’s robotaxis got stuck during the power outage, the company shared that its vehicles “successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday.”
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“Navigating an event of this magnitude presented a unique challenge for autonomous technology,” the company wrote.
Saturday’s mess is the latest example of how Waymo is still uncovering unforeseen issues with its software and its approach to designing a reliable fleet of self-driving vehicles. The company already had to ship multiple software updates to make its robotaxis wait for stopped school buses, which prompted a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation and led to a recall.
Waymo appears to be testing adding Google’s Gemini AI chatbot to its robotaxis in an effort to integrate an AI assistant that would accompany riders and answer their queries, according to findings by researcher Jane Manchun Wong.
“While digging through Waymo’s mobile app code, I discovered the complete system prompt for its unreleased Gemini integration,” Wong wrote in a blog. “The document, internally titled ‘Waymo Ride Assistant Meta-Prompt,’ is a 1,200+ line specification that defines exactly how the AI assistant is expected to behave inside a Waymo vehicle.”
The feature hasn’t shipped in public builds, but Wong says the system prompt makes it clear that this is “more than a simple chatbot.” The assistant is said to have the ability to answer questions, manage certain in-cabin functions like climate control, and, if required, reassure riders.
“While we have no details to share today, our team is always tinkering with features to make riding with Waymo delightful, seamless, and useful,” Julia Ilina, a spokesperson for Waymo, told TechCrunch. “Some of these may or may not come to our rider experience.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Gemini has been integrated into the Alphabet-owned self-driving company’s stack. Waymo says it has used Gemini’s “world knowledge” to train its autonomous vehicles to navigate complex, rare, and high-stakes scenarios.
Wong writes the assistant is instructed to possess a clear identity and purpose: “a friendly and helpful AI companion integrated into a Waymo autonomous vehicle” whose primary goal is “to enhance the rider’s experience by providing useful information and assistance in a safe, reassuring, and unobtrusive manner.” The bot is directed to use clear, simple language and avoid technical jargon, and is instructed to keep its responses succinct to one to three sentences.
According to the system prompts, when a rider activates the assistant via the in-car screen, Gemini can choose from a set of pre-approved greetings personalized with the rider’s first name. The system can also access contextual data about the rider, like how many Waymo trips they’ve been on.
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The prompts currently let Gemini access and control in-car features, like the temperature, lighting and music. Notably absent from the function list are volume control, route changes, seat adjustment, and window control, Wong pointed out. If a rider asks for a feature that Gemini can’t control, the bot is to reply with “aspirational phrases,” like, “It’s not something I can do yet.”
Interestingly, the assistant is directed to maintain a clear distinction between its identity as Gemini the AI bot and the autonomous driving technology (the Waymo Driver). So when replying to a question such as, “How do you see the road?” Gemini shouldn’t say “I use a combination of sensors,” and instead should reply, “The Waymo Driver uses a combination of sensors…”
The system prompts include a range of compelling tidbits, such as how the bot is meant to handle being asked questions about competitors like Tesla or the now-defunct Cruise, or which trigger keywords will get it to stop talking.
The assistant is also directed to avoiding speculating on, explaining, confirming, denying, or commenting on real-time driving actions or specific driving events. So if a passenger asks about a video they saw of a Waymo hitting something, the bot is instructed to not answer directly and deflect.
“Your role is not to be a spokesperson for the driving system’s performance, and you must not adopt a defensive or apologetic tone,” the prompt reads.
The in-car assistant is allowed to answer general knowledge questions like about the weather, the height of the Eiffel Tower, what time the local Trader Joe’s closes, and who won the last World Series. It is not allowed to take real-world actions like ordering food, making reservations, or handling emergencies.
Waymo isn’t the only company integrating AI assistants into driverless vehicles. Tesla is doing something similar with xAI’s Grok. The two different car assistants serve different functions, however. Gemini appears to be programmed to be more pragmatic and ride-focused, while Grok is pitched more as an in-car buddy that can handle long conversations and remember context from previous questions.
A postmortem from Waymo on Tuesday is offering at least some clarity about what the hell happened to its poor, benighted San Francisco operation after much of the power across the city went out on Saturday.
Waymo behavior at dark stoplights forced the Alphabet-owned company to call all its San Francisco robotaxis back home, a logistical catastrophe. But in fairness, social media posts probably made Waymo’s ad-hoc solution look even more haphazard than it actually was, giving the impression that all the Waymos in San Francisco had been zapped at the same time by whatever caused the outage, causing them to halt in place, including in busy intersections, as if their robot drivers had been raptured to robo-heaven.
“While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets.”
It seems very important to Waymo’s brand to not ever allow the impression that Waymos are ever remotely driven. What Waymo has instead of “remote drivers” or “teleoperators” is called “fleet response,” a Waymo blog post says. When the Waymo Driver encounters a truly heterogeneous driving situation, it sends out for human feedback, which we’re not supposed to think of as a bailout. It might want confirmation about, say, what it suspects is a completely impassable intersection, and a human operator sends back signals directing it where it might want to go.
“Fleet response can influence the Waymo Driver’s path, whether indirectly through indicating lane closures, explicitly requesting the AV use a particular lane, or, in the most complex scenarios, explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider,” the Waymo blog post about Fleet Response says. You might or might not consider this the input of a “remote driver” or a “teleoperator.” Waymo clearly doesn’t.
At any rate, all these furtive Waymos at blacked-out stoplights in San Francisco on Saturday created a logjam of these requests for human feedback, and Waymo’s postmortem acknowledges that the logjam caused even worse traffic.
So what Waymo says happened next seems like a reasonable course of action in response to causing traffic during a blackout: “We directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately so we could return vehicles to our depots in waves. This ensured we did not further add to the congestion or obstruct emergency vehicles during the peak of the recovery effort.”
From the outside, and especially on social media, this is the part that looked worse than it really was. Posts showing Waymos in intersections could be seen next to posts showing Waymos stopped at the side of the road. This made it look like San Francisco was a post-apocalypic wasteland strewn with dead robotaxis. It’s reasonable to ask: if they weren’t dead, why didn’t the company send them home? But it’s also reasonable for Waymo to want to avoid a critical mass of Waymos disrupting San Francisco like a herd of stampeding Wildebeasts, and thus making the vehicles just wait on the side of the road until their group is called.
This created a further bad look for Waymo: alongside the Waymos that did become obstructions, there were at least some crowds of safely parked Waymos, not glitching out, but simply waiting for the signal to go back to their depots in an orderly fashion.
6 Waymo’s parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage pic.twitter.com/9fBkoxgKwe
There are no future plans mentioned in the postmortem about introducing remote drivers. What future plans are included, rather puzzlingly, don’t include anything—at least so far—about changing the Waymo Driver’s fundamental driving software at all. The three bullets about Waymo’s “path forward” all focus on emergencies: “Integrating more information about outages,” “Updating our emergency preparedness and response,” and “Expanding our first responder engagement.”
Robotaxis are programmed to drive conservatively, and thus have boy scout-like behavior records in aggregate, but this postmortem doesn’t show Waymo reflecting at all about the fact that these are aliens on our roads who will misbehave and fail in totally novel ways that can’t be predicted. In fact, it ends on a note of defiance, saying “we are undaunted by the opportunity to challenge the status quo of our roads, and we’re proud to continue serving San Franciscan residents and visitors.”
Waymo suspended its robotaxi service in San Francisco on Saturday evening after a massive blackout appeared to leave many of its vehicles stalled on city streets.
Numerous photos and videos posted to social media captured Waymo robotaxis stalled at roads and intersections as human drivers were either stuck behind them or weaved around them.
Waymo said on Saturday that it had temporarily suspended service in the city due to the blackout. It wasn’t until late Sunday afternoon that Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement that the company was resuming service.
“Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” the spokesperson said. “While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.”
The Waymo spokesperson added that the company is “focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day.”
The blackout also took down many of the city’s traffic lights and affected Muni mass transit, with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie warning residents to stay off the roads unless they needed to travel.
Waymo said that although its self-driving systems are designed to treat non-functioning traffic lights as four-way stops, the scale of Saturday’s blackout caused some robotaxis to remain stationary for longer than normal as they tried to assess the intersections. The company also said that the majority of active trips were completed successfully.
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The blackout appears to have been caused by a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in the city. SFGate reports that around 120,000 PG&E customers were affected by the blackout, and while the majority of them had power restored by late Saturday, 35,000 customers were still without power on Sunday morning. PG&E’s website also showed thousands of San Francisco customers still affected at that time.
A letter from Tiger Global Management that leaked earlier this month said Waymo is now providing 450,000 robotaxi rides per week, nearly double the amount that the Alphabet-owned company disclosed in the spring.
This post has been updated with Waymo’s statement that service is resuming.
Several of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were seen stuck in the middle of San Francisco streets following a significant power outage that took out the city’s traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-hailing services in the city, but images and videos on social media showed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, told Engadget in an email. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon.”
The power outage was attributed to a fire at one of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)’s substations. The incident began sometime on Saturday morning, which PG&E said affected approximately 130,000 customers. As of Sunday morning, the Californian power company said its crews have restored power to about 110,000 of those customers, while working on the remaining 21,000 customers in “the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown San Francisco.”
Waymo hasn’t provided an explanation as to why the power outage left its autonomous cars stranded in San Francisco streets, but this episode may have revealed a notable fault with the Waymo Driver system. Waymo indicates on its website that its autonomous driving system “responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs,” which could indicate that the self-driving cars struggled with the out-of-order street lights. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, also saw an opportunity to chime in on X, posting that “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.”
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for all things “future of transportation.” To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
The year in transportation started with a couple of bankruptcies — Canoo and Nikola — and now it’s ending with two more. Rad Power Bikes is coming to an end — or at least a bankruptcy. The electric bike company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, weeks after it warned employees that it could shut down without new funding. A spokesperson told TechCrunch the company will continue to operate while the bankruptcy case proceeds, and it’s looking to sell the business within 45-60 days.
And then there is troubled lidar maker Luminar, which also filed for bankruptcy this week. The Luminar bankruptcy does not seem like a let’s-help-it-live-another-day type of situation.
The Luminar filing, which occurred after months of layoffs, executive departures, and a legal fight with its largest customer, Volvo, notes the company plans to sell off the business. It has already reached a deal to sell its semiconductor subsidiary. While the company will continue to operate during the bankruptcy process to “minimize disruptions” for its suppliers and customers, Luminar will eventually cease to exist once it’s completed, senior reporter Sean O’Kane reported. Want to learn more? I recommend reading O’Kane’s piece that looks at how Luminar’s doomed Volvo deal helped drag the company into bankruptcy.
Even though the year was bookended by some failures, that doesn’t mean 2025 wasn’t filled with innovation and growth. The emerging robotaxi industry has indeed emerged. With that I have noticed new kinds of autonomous vehicle-adjacent companies popping up, and I expect that to become a trend in 2026.
The scale of robotaxis was largely driven by Waymo’s fast-paced growth, although Zoox and Tesla have also started to set up shop. This next year could be when we see these companies really squaring off in the same markets; it will also be the year when companies will face even greater scrutiny over safety and how robotaxis fit into daily life.
Meanwhile, EVs have had their struggles this year and automakers have struggled to adjust.
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For instance, Ford is pivoting yet again. The company said this week it is ending production of the fully-electric F-150 Lightning as part of a broader companywide shake-up that will put more emphasis on hybrids and gas-powered vehicles. As part of its shift, Ford is turning to the increasingly popular “extended range electric vehicle” version of the truck, which adds a gas generator that can recharge the battery pack to power the motors for over 700 miles. It’s also getting into the energy storage business — gotta do something with all those batteries — and says it is still committed to producing a midsized electric truck that will go on sale in 2027.
But hey, the EV is not dead. And the promise of smaller, more affordable ones are looming in the near distance with the imminent launch of Rivian’s R2 and Slate Auto’s electric truck.
Housekeeping note: This is the last newsletter of the year. The next time you hear from me, I will be in Las Vegas for the annual tech trade show known as CES. Going? Reach out.
To everyone, thank you for reading, participating in the polls, and sending me emails (yes, even the critical ones). Your voice matters and I love hearing from you. See you in 2026!
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Reporter Jagmeet Singh, who is based in India, always seems to have birds chirping in his ear about startup deals. The latest is Spinny, the Indian online marketplace for used cars.
Spinny is raising around $160 million, funds that will be used to acquire car services startup GoMechanic. TechCrunch learned the Series G round includes a mix of primary and secondary transactions and will value the 10-year-old startup at about $1.8 billion post-money.
Boatsetter and GetMyBoat, two companies that operate Airbnb-type business models for boats, agreed to merge.
Cowboy is back — sort of. The Brussels e-bike startup has been acquired by ReBirth Group Holding, a company that owns Gitane, Peugeot, and Solex. The e-bike startup had its buzzy moments but ultimately ran into problems, including a frame recall. The terms weren’t disclosed, but apparently it includes €15 million ($17.6 million) from existing shareholders.
Nirvana Insurance, an insurance tech startup focused on trucking, raised $100 million in a Series D funding round led by Valor Equity Partners. Lightspeed and General Catalyst also joined. Former TC reporter Mary Ann Azevedo had the scoop on the new valuation, which is now $1.5 billion.
Notable reads and other tidbits
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Redwoodlaunched a newly patented Battery Collection Bin designed to encourage consumers to recycle batteries. The system, which will launch in San Francisco, safely stores, packages, and monitors hundreds of batteries and battery-containing devices.
Rivian has added its branded “Universal Hands-Free” driving via a software update to its second-generation R1 EVs (not sure I am a fan of that term “universal hands-free,” btw). This upgrade will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel on 3.5 million miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada (so long as there are visible painted lines). Also in case you missed it over the weekend, senior reporter Sean O’Kane took us inside Rivian’s bet on AI-powered self-driving.
Securing America’s Future Energy has a new CEO. Avery Ash, SAFE’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Special Initiatives, will become the organization’s next CEO.
Slate Auto, the electric truck startup backed by Jeff Bezos, said it has collected more than 150,000 refundable reservations for its low-cost EV due out at the end of 2026.
Sterling Anderson has been on the job at GM for six months and there is already chatter about him taking over as CEO once Mary Barra retires. My take: Anderson has big tasks ahead, so let’s all take a beat before assuming he’ll get that top post. GM president Mark Reuss is also in the wings.
Tesla has pulled its human safety monitors out of its robotaxis in Austin. The robotaxi service is limited with a fleet size numbering in the dozens. Still, it is a milestone. And for those wondering, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told me this week that Tesla has not applied for a driverless testing permit. The company only holds a permit to test autonomous vehicle technology with a human safety operator located behind the wheel.
Meanwhile, Tesla is facing a tricky situation in California. Here’s the gist: An administrative law judge agreed with the case initiated by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles and ruled Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing that gave customers a false impression of the capabilities of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving driver-assistance software. The DMV wanted to suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses in the state for 30 days as a penalty for its action, and a judge has agreed.
Ah, but wait. The DMV stayed the order and is giving Tesla 60 days to comply. That gives Tesla two options if it wants to keep those licenses: drop the Autopilot name or ship software to its cars that make them autonomous.
One more thing …
Some of you might not know that I am also co-host of Equity, a TechCrunch’s podcast about the business of startups. I generally co-host our Friday show, which offers commentary and analysis on the news of the week.
Every now and then I interview a founder or VC for the Wednesday show. My latest is an interview with Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse Ventures and former chief growth officer at Rivian, who thinks we’re entering an era of major reindustrialization in the U.S. — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor. Check out the episode here.
There was a power outage in San Francisco on Saturday, initially leaving 124,000 of 414,000 customers—about 30%—in the dark. It also caused a widespread Waymo meltdown, with apparently all active Waymo robotaxis in the affected parts of the city stuck in robotic comas, blocking intersections and choking traffic on some streets.
Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion issued a statement at approximately 7:00 p.m., saying service had been “temporarily suspended” due to the outage. “We are focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work,” Philion said.
6 Waymo’s parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage pic.twitter.com/9fBkoxgKwe
As of Sunday morning there wasn’t yet an update from Waymo on whether the company’s robotaxis were still out of commission, nor on what had caused the problem in the first place.
Gizmodo asked Waymo if the vehicles had trouble traversing blacked-out stoplights, or if the issue had something to do with data reception or transmission. We also asked the company if any Waymo vehicles were still blocking the streets. We will update if we hear back. (Update: Waymo provided a statement, which has been appended to the end of this article)
Until there’s some kind of postmortem from the Alphabet-owned company, there’s no way to be absolutely sure that the problem wasn’t an Anakin Skywalker-type situation, in which the nerve center of the robot hive was destroyed by a 9-year-old, causing all the robots to drop dead.
Companies like Waymo hold themselves up as harbingers of a safer future on the roads, touting statistics like 82% fewer crashes in which an airbag deployed, and 92% fewer pedestrian collisions with injuries when compared to human drivers.
But, like when a San Francisco Waymo fatally ran over a locally famous cat named Kit Kat in October, the issue may be less about Waymos being better or worse than humans in aggregate than the fact that robots fail in unpredictable, alien ways. The actual footage of Kit Kat’s fatal injury shows one such example. A human driver probably wouldn’t do what seems to happen in the video: start from a dead stop while a person is actively trying to coax a cat out from under their car.
Similarly, human drivers tend not to suddenly go offline en masse when there’s a blackout.
Updated at 7:12 p.m. ET. A Waymo spokesperson provided the following statement:
“We are resuming ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions. While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.
“Throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials. We are focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day.”
A parenthetical has also been added above indicating that Waymo replied to Gizmodo.
Rivian is putting AI in the driver’s seat. At an event on Thursday, the Palo Alto-based electric vehicle company unveiled a new AI assistant feature and teased details about the expanded self-driving tech it’s developing. Rivian’s AI-powered Rivian Assistant, which responds to the phrase “Hey Rivian” or can be activated via a button on the steering wheel, will be integrated with Google Calendar so it can show drivers their schedule, change a meeting time, and relay information to others.
“The assistant has memory, has context, it remembers the full story,” Wassym Bensaid, the company’s chief software officer, said during the event, after a live demonstration. “Who you are talking to, where you are going, and what you just searched for, and then it puts everything into a perfect message.” With these features, he added, Rivian will deliver an “AI-defined vehicle.”
The company also announced its forthcoming autonomous driving capabilities, which involve scenarios in which the driver can have their hands off the wheel but need to watch the road ahead, and eventually situations in which the driver can have their hands off the wheel and their eyes off the road. Coming down the pike next year is point-to-point travel, “in which the vehicle can drive address-to-address,” said Rivian founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe. “What that means is that you can get into the vehicle at your house, plug in the address to where you’re going, and the vehicle will completely drive you there.” When that happens, your hands can be off the wheel but you still need to be watching the road.
After that, he said, comes “eyes-off [driving], meaning you can navigate point-to-point with your hands off the wheel, but importantly, your eyes off the road. This gives you your time back. You can be on your phone, or reading a book—no longer needing to be actively involved in the operation of the vehicle.”
Rivian’s forthcoming R2 vehicle (pictured below) is expected to cost around $45,000 when it goes on sale next year, making it more affordable than the company’s R1T truck and R1S SUV. Both of those vehicles start at north of $70,000.
Scaringe also said that after the hands-off and eyes-off travel comes something more ambitious: an even greater level of autonomy approaching that of true self-driving vehicles, like in the ballpark of what Waymo already offers. “The next major step will be personal Level Four,” he said. “With this, the vehicle will operate entirely on its own. This means it can drop the kids off at school, it can pick you up at the airport.” Eventually, he said, “this also enables us to pursue opportunities in the ride-share space.”
Scaringe also said that the quantity of roads in North America that existing Rivian second-gen vehicles can drive in hands-off mode will expand after an over-the-air update. That will allow Rivians to handle over 3.5 million miles of roads in hands-off mode, he said.
A pregnant woman in San Francisco gave birth inside a Waymo robotaxi Monday night en route to UCSF Medical Center, marking the latest milestone in the driverless car saga that no one saw coming — except everyone with more than six months of experience behind the wheel of a ride-share vehicle.
According to The SF Standard, Waymo’s remote team detected “unusual activity” and called 911, though the vehicle beat emergency services to the hospital.
Some traditions, it seems, are immune to disruption. For decades, expectant mothers have been racing against biology in the back seats of taxis and Ubers from London to Los Angeles. There was the mother in India who named her son Uber after giving birth to him en route to the hospital (the driver reportedly helped in the delivery). There was also the California couple in 2017 who welcomed their baby in an Uber during Shabbat.”Everyone is telling us to name the baby Uber,” the father joked, before adding, “But we can’t do that.” (Ah, though, they could have!)
The stories go on and on. Now, Silicon Valley has automated the experience, at least partially.
The vehicle in San Francisco was promptly removed for cleaning. Further, this wasn’t Waymo’s first birth — the company told the Standard that a Phoenix baby got there first. “While this is a very rare occurrence,” a Waymo spokesperson deadpanned, “some of our newest riders just can’t wait to experience their first Waymo ride.”
Waymo, the ride-hailing service, says it is planning a voluntary software recall to fix a glitch after reports its self-driving cars don’t stop for school buses. The company has already tried to fix the issue, but police in Texas said it didn’t work. Kris Van Cleave reports.
Self-driving taxis from the Alphabet-owned company Waymo are coming to the streets of Orlando early next year, the company announced in a news release. This will make Orlando one of the first 10 cities in the country to offer the autonomous vehicle service.
“The future of transportation is accelerating, and we are driving it forward with a commitment to quality and safety,” the company stated. “Our rigorous process of continuous iteration, validation, and local engagement ensures that we put communities first as we expand.”
Waymo vehicles, powered by artificial intelligence technology, are fully self-driving, so don’t expect to see a driver or human supervisor behind the steering wheel of one of these suckers. Waymo’s so-called “robotaxis” are already in operation in Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As of May, the AI company — owned by Google’s parent company — has provided more than 10 million rides since it launched driverless trips for the public in 2020.
“We’re thrilled that Waymo plans to bring its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to Orlando, and to the tens of millions of visitors we host each year,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a statement, adding that he plans to be “one of the very first” riders. “Waymo will be another exciting transportation option for the region that will enhance the investments we are already making in reducing congestion and increasing road and pedestrian safety,” he said.
According to a city spokesperson, Waymo “has been keeping the city in the loop about their plans” to expand to the City Beautiful, but said that there are no city approvals needed for them to operate.
The company, at the same time, announced plans to expand to Dallas, Houston, Miami and San Antonio in the “coming weeks.” The cost of a Waymo ride can vary based on factors such as distance and duration.
A reporter for Business Insider found that his 12-minute Waymo ride in San Francisco was pricier at $16 than a ride using the same route through Uber and Lyft. However, since no tip to a driver is necessary with Waymo, the cost for an Uber leveled out to be about the same. The trip through Lyft was still a few dollars cheaper — even with a 20 percent tip included.
Is Waymo safe?
Waymo has received criticism elsewhere for risks to public safety and for its potential to undermine publicly owned and operated transit systems (despite incentives Waymo has offered for people to use both).
Labor unions such as the Teamsters and Transport Workers Union, both of which represent professionals in the trucking and transportation industries, have similarly called out Waymo for threatening their members’ jobs.
“New Yorkers be warned, Waymo will turn pedestrians into cannon fodder and will block streets for emergency responders,” said Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen in a recent statement on Waymo’s expansion to New York City. “Waymo isn’t ready for NYC’s streets and the end goal is to replace rideshare drivers, taxi drivers, and transit workers with robots.”
Waymo, just one of several companies that have rolled out autonomous vehicles, has faced protests from drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft in cities such as in Seattle, where Waymo has also looked to expand.
A Teamsters local in Boston last month joined a labor coalition in support of a city ordinance there that would regulate and study the potential impact of autonomous vehicles. “I regularly transport patients to Boston hospitals, and if robotaxis block us, freeze in place, or don’t know how to yield, they could kill people,” said Abby O’Brien, a Teamster and paramedic for a local ambulance company.
Waymo for its part has pushed back on critical assessments of its safety and its potential impact on the transportation workforce. “Transportation is a team sport, and we believe autonomous vehicles, professional drivers, and the wider ecosystem will thrive together as we increase transportation options for everyone,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher told Axios in a statement. Driving and trucking is one of the most common occupations among young men without a college degree, a 2024 analysis from the Pew Research Center found.
As far as safety, Waymo has faced its fair share of concerns — even recalling some 1,200 of its vehicles last year after “minor collisions” — yet has continued to defend the safety and integrity of its software. The company recently released the results of an independent safety audit that determined Waymo’s procedures for determining the safety of their vehicles met industry standards.
A probe by the federal government, launched last May to investigate a “series of minor collisions and unexpected behavior” from Waymo vehicles, concluded this past July with federal safety regulators reportedly opting not to take any further action.
However, as of last month, the company is once again under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over reports that its vehicles may not be complying with traffic safety rules around stopped school buses. A Waymo spokesperson told news service Reuters that they had “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release.”
An independent analysis of federal crash data by the Substack publication Understanding AI found that, from February to August of this year, most of the 41 crashes that reportedly involved Waymo’s robotaxis weren’t the fault of Waymo’s software itself, but rather actions by other drivers or — as The Atlantic put it — “seemingly an act of God.”
Waymo has argued that its robotaxis are actually safer than vehicles with human drivers, stating their “Driver” (unlike actual humans) is “always alert, follows speed limits, promotes seat belt use, and operates some of the safest vehicles on the road.”
Orlando has been working toward eliminating all traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries in the city through its “Vision Zero” plan by 2040. And city officials say they’ve already made progress.
According to a recent news release, Orlando has already seen a 40 percent reduction in “deadly and serious-injury crashes” since 2019. The city credits this progress to, among other things, their red light camera program (which fines drivers who run red lights), the completion of more than 100 “safety projects” along roads citywide, and improving the city’s emergency response through better coordination with Orlando’s police and fire departments.
“Every life lost on our roadways is one too many,” Mayor Dyer said in a recent statement. “By designing safer streets, using technology to improve enforcement and working closely with our first responders and residents, we’re proving that traffic deaths are preventable and that together, we can make Orlando’s streets safe for everyone.”
Waymo continues to expand its reach, with the robotaxi company posting Friday that it’s now “officially authorized to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State.”
Waymo already operates in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles (and outside California as well, in Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix). But maps published by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles showed that the company can now test and deploy its autonomous vehicles across a much larger area in both the Bay Area and Southern California.
In the Bay Area, Waymo’s approved areas of operation now include most of the East Bay and North Bay (including Napa/Wine Country), as well as Sacramento. In Southern California, the company’s approved territory now stretches from Santa Clarita (north of Los Angeles) to San Diego.
Although Waymo’s post doesn’t offer many details about when it plans to actually start offering rides in all these new areas, the company wrote, “Next stop: welcoming riders in San Diego in mid-2026!”
The company had previously announced its intention to launch in San Diego next year, along with Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
We discussed the growth of Waymo and other robotaxi companies on the latest episode of the Equity podcast. My co-host Sean O’Kane noted that as Waymo begins to provide more unfettered access across the Bay Area, people could be spending a lot more time in their robotaxis — so we might see them using the service in new, weird, or even dangerous ways.
On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles published a document outlining a list of newly approved areas of coverage for Alphabet, Inc.’s robotaxi service Waymo, and the implications could be massive.
The areas where “testing and deployment” of Waymo driverless taxis will now be legally tolerated by the state include two massive, apparently continuous swaths of geography full of interconnected urban population centers, suburbs, exurbs, and the rural land in between them. This includes chunks of (in alphabetical order) Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, Napa, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, Ventura, and Yolo Counties.
The new map includes much of California wine country, and fills in the remainder of the Bay Area. It also adds a great deal of coverage to densely populated parts of southern California. Most of Orange and San Diego Counties are now state-approved Waymo zones, for instance, and each of those accounts for millions of residents. If Waymo follows this approval with a rollout of its service in all these areas, it means commuters can travel for hours in Waymo vehicles, sightseers can take long day trips. Exurban residents can take Waymo rides to Los Angeles International Airport.
Famous expanses of California highways—and freeways—could potentially open up to driverless taxi traffic. You could take the scenic route up Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego to Malibu, or driverlessly reenact the first episode of The O.C. by hailing a ride from Chino to Newport Beach.
Of course, the price of doing any of these things could be breathtaking. At the average of $11.22 per kilometer cited by one Waymo price analysis from June, it would cost, by my count, $2,636 to travel from San Diego to Malibu in a Waymo if the current pricing pattern holds—though a new pricing pattern would probably emerge for longer rides. A similar ride would cost about $200 in a human-piloted Lyft or Uber, according to the fare estimator site Rideguru.
Waymo says it has no specific plan for rolling out its service in most of these newly permitted areas, though it does have its eyes on one of these areas. “We appreciate the DMV’s approval of our expanded fully autonomous operations,” a Waymo representative told CBS News, who claimed the company’s next expansion “will be San Diego, where we’ll welcome our first riders in mid-2026.”
Get ready to see self-driving vehicles cruising across Minneapolis.
Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, says “a mixed fleet of our Jaguar I-PACE and Zeekr RT vehicles” will hit the streets starting Thursday morning in its efforts to “lay the early groundwork” for full service in Minnesota’s largest city.
“To prepare for Minneapolis’ winter weather, we’ve made great strides in our efforts to operate in heavier snow — including testing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, California’s Sierra Nevada, and Upstate New York,” Waymo said in a statement.
State lawmakers and safe-driving advocates are hailing the company’s arrival, including the bipartisan co-chairs of the Minnesota House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee.
“We support proven, safe, and reliable options to our transit network that directly supports our goals of modernizing our infrastructure, while creating a cleaner, more efficient transportation system,” said Republican Rep. Jon Koznick.
A Waymo vehicle on the streets of Minneapolis on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025.
WCCO
“We are committed to ensuring autonomous deployment like Waymo’s is done responsibly, leveraging this innovation to improve connectivity, reduce congestion, and secure Minnesota’s place as a national leader in the future of mobility,” said Democratic Rep. Erin Koegel.
Lauren Johnson, regional executive director of the Minnesota chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says Waymo’s arrival will also help cut down on the number of impaired drivers on Minneapolis streets.
“MADD has been a long-time partner with Waymo, and we are proud of our shared commitment to protect drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and the community,” Johnson said.
Is Waymo really ready for prime time?
While Waymo — whose driverless taxi fleets first hit the streets of Phoenix in 2020 — positions itself as a transportation panacea, the company has been criticized for risky road testing of its fleets in real traffic.
In an incident earlier this year near Atlanta, a Waymo vehicle failed to yield for a school bus that had its red lights activated. And in an incident in San Francisco, a police officer spotted a Waymo vehicle making an illegal U-turn, leading to a very confusing traffic stop.
The company argues that its own safety data shows 91% fewer serious injury crashes, and 92% fewer crashes injuring a pedestrian, compared to a human driver.
Robert Sumwalt, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CBS MoneyWatch last year that self-driving vehicles are “not a perfect science yet.”
“Right now it’s like trying to send a rocket to the moon in 1910 when the Wright Brothers were still working on their planes,” said Sumwalt, who is currently CBS News’ transportation safety analyst.
Earlier this month, Sumwalt warned Waymo and other autonomous vehicle companies “need to be held to a higher standard.”
“Before we have widespread use of self-driving vehicles, we’ve got to make sure that they are implemented properly,” he said.
In a statement to WCCO, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said state law “neither prohibits nor specifically authorizes automated vehicles to conduct testing on streets in Minnesota.”
The death of a neighborhood bodega cat named Kit Kat has shaken San Francisco’s Mission District, according to The New York Times.
After Kit Kat was run over by a Waymo robotaxi on the evening of October 27, locals created a shrine to memorialize him. The area has also been decorated with competing signs, some criticizing Waymo, others noting the many deaths caused by human drivers.
Jackie Fielder, who represents the Mission District on SF’s Board of Supervisors, brought up Kit Kat while making the case for a proposed city resolution that calls on the state to allow local voters to decide whether driverless cars can operate in their neighborhoods.
“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Fielder told the Times. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
Waymo, whose co-CEO recently spoke at Disrupt about the importance of safety, described the incident as one where a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.” The company said it sends “our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him.”
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It seems like a day doesn’t go by without Waymo making some kind of expansion announcement. Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., are just a few of the cities the company plans to bring its robotaxi to in the coming months. But as I have argued in this newsletter before, there is another “expansion” I think is more important.
Freeways.
And now after years of testing and development, the company’s commercial robotaxi service is using freeways around the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
This is a critical expansion for the company. It’s the concrete and asphalt connective tissue in sprawling metro areas like the Bay Area. This new freeway access is fueling Waymo’s expansion in that region, which is now 260 square miles and encompasses Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
Robotaxi rides can have more efficient routes too. Waymo told me it will reduce ride times by up to 50%.
And using freeways is also essential for Waymo to offer rides to and from the San Francisco Airport, a location the company is currently testing in.
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That freeway-to-airport moment will be the big unlock for Waymo. But will it be enough to help push it in the black? Until someone over there slides me their balance sheet, I can’t say. It will certainly be a popular option for travelers. That doesn’t mean the economics will pencil out.
Read on for more news, including Einride’s SPAC bid, deals for Harbingerand Teradar, as well as how Via fared in its first earnings and a looming shutdown for Rad Power Bikes. Plus! Scroll down to get the results of the Tesla poll.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
It’s been nearly nine months since Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson abruptly resigned, leaving the company without a permanent replacement. That may be about to change, though.
A few little birds told us Lucid Motors has zeroed in on a candidate for the top role. It’s expected to be someone outside the organization, which is perhaps no surprise; in August, we shared here that the company and the executive hiring firm it’s using had cast a very wide net and was even cold-calling some candidates. This would likely mean that Marc Winterhoff, who’s been serving as interim CEO, would slide back to the COO role he occupied before Rawlinson left.
Another SPAC has entered the AV world! Mergers with special acquisition companies may not be officially “back,” but they are certainly popular among autonomous vehicle companies.
Einride, the Swedish electric and autonomous truck startup, plans to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, just six weeks after it raised $100 million from investors. The SPAC merger with Legato Merger Corp. values Einride at $1.8 billion in pre-money equity.
Einride does generate revenue, which may sound obvious but there have been plenty of pre-revenue transportation companies that have SPAC’d in recent years.
For now, its primary source of revenue is coming from its software-as-a-service product and a fleet of 200 heavy-duty electric trucks used by companies like Heineken and PepsiCo. Its unusual-looking autonomous podlike trucks are still in pilot mode.
The merger is expected to close in the first half of 2026, with Einride making its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Forterra, a company developing autonomous tech for defense, raised $238 million in equity and debt funding. Moore Strategic Ventures led the equity piece of the funding, while Crescent Cove provided the debt financing.
Gopuff, the rapid-delivery startup, raised $250 million in a round led by Eldridge Industries and Valor Equity Partners. Baillie Gifford, Robinhood, Equalis Capital, George Ruan, Yakir Gabay, and Gopuff’s co-founders. The funding put its valuation at $8.5 billion, according to Bloomberg, a significant markdown from its last raise in 2021.
Harbinger, the Los Angeles-based electric truck startup, raised $160 million in a Series C funding round co-led by FedEx. As part of the investment, FedEx ordered 53 of Harbinger’s electric truck chassis.
Octopus Electric Vehicles, a U.K.-based electric vehicle-leasing business, has struck a deal with lenders, including Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Agricole, to take its total funding line to £2 billion ($2.6 billion), Sky News reported.
Teradar, a Boston-based startup developing a solid-state sensor, raised $150 million in a Series B funding round from investors Capricorn Investment Group, Lockheed Martin’s venture arm, mobility-focused firm Ibex Investors, and VXI Capital, a new defense-focused fund led by the former CTO of the U.S. military’s Defense Innovation Unit.
Upway, an e-bike refurbishment startup, raised $60 million in a Series C funding round led by A.P. Moller. Galvanize, Ora Global, and Sequoia Capital also participated. The company has raised more than $125 million since its founding in 2021.
Vay, a German startup that remotely pilots rental cars to customers, announced a $60 million investment from Singaporean tech heavyweight Grab. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval and expected to close by the end of the year, may be followed by “an additional $350M as joint milestones are achieved within the first year.”
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Ford is expanding the availability of its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving technology in Europe. The automaker will make the system available in several vehicles, including the Puma, Puma Gen-E, Kuga, and Ranger PHEV 5 models starting in spring 2026.
Joby Aviation conducted the first flight of its turbine electric, autonomous VTOL aircraft. This demonstrator shouldn’t be confused with its all-electric air taxi, although it was built off that platform. This aircraft has a hybrid turbine powertrain and is designed for defense applications.
Lyft has partnered with Curb, a ride-hailing platform for licensed taxis. Under the deal, Lyft riders will be connected with Curb’s network of drivers through an integration with the Curb Flow platform, which is already in Los Angeles. Other cities will soon follow.
Rad Power Bikes, one of the more popular e-bike companies, may not be long for this world. The company has informed its employees that it will shut down in January if it is unable to find new funding or get acquired, according to an internal staff email viewed by TechCrunch.
Tesla might bring Apple CarPlay to its EVs. But at this point, should it? Meanwhile, the company’s energy storage division is dealing with an expanded recall of its consumer-based Powerwall 2 product after reports of fires.
TheBoring Company, an Elon Musk company, is under scrutiny again. This time because of reports that firefighters performing a safety drill at one of The Boring Company’s construction sites in Las Vegas received burns from chemicals used in the tunnel-excavation process. And the controversy doesn’t stop there.
Toyota started production at a new $13.9 billion battery plant in North Carolina. While Toyota has several facilities in the U.S., this is its first battery plant to be built outside of Japan. And it’s not done investing in the U.S. The company said it plans to invest up to $10 billion more than previously expected over the next five years.
Uber has quietly begun piloting in-app video recording for its drivers in India. The ride-hailing company is also seeking more premium customers through new efforts like Uber Ski, which lets riders schedule a vehicle in advance to nearly 40 popular ski destinations in North America and Europe, including Vail in Colorado and Park City in Utah.
Via had its first earnings since it became a publicly traded company, and, welp, it lost money. The tech transit software company reported a loss of $36.9 million in its third quarter, a 73% increase since the same period last year. Its revenue grew to $713 million, an 11% increase YoY.
One more thing …
Remember the poll in last week’s newsletter? I asked which product goal is Tesla most likely to achieve by 2035? The options are based on real goals laid out in Musk’s $1 trillion compensation package:
20 million Tesla vehicles delivered
10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions
1 million robots delivered
1 million robotaxis in commercial operation
None of these will be reached
And y’all are split between two options: Tesla delivering 20 million vehicles, which received 34.7% of the vote, and “None of these will be reached,” which received 32% of the vote.
The one item you seem to agree on is that Tesla is unlikely to deliver on the other three goals. About 9.5% of readers picked the 1 million robots option, 12.6% chose 10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, and 10.5% picked 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation within 10 years.
Note: If you want to participate in our polls, sign up for the Mobility newsletter here!
Add San Diego and Las Vegas to the list of cities getting the Waymo treatment. The company says those cities should see self-driving Waymo vehicles on the road soon as it launches service there in 2026.
Even though Waymo’s cabs (the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace and Zeekr RT) will be in manual mode with a human driver controlling the car at first, the Google spin-off company will be gearing up for autonomous operations soon in those new locales. Waymo already has driverless operations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona, and is driving with safety drivers in New York City and Denver and in partnership with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. Plans for more autonomous taxi trips include Washington, D.C. and more of the San Francisco Bay Area.
But if the mention of Detroit and Denver alongside the sun-soaked streets of Chandler, Arizona and Santa Monica, California seems out of place, well, it sure is. If Waymo can pull this off, it will be some of the first fully autonomous operations where the roads are slick with wet, slippery ice and visibility is terrible and dark for more hours of the day.
Tesla owners have access to Full Self-Driving mode in all of Tesla’s EVs, and have been a litmus test for autonomous driving in inclement weather outside of the winter-free zones Waymo (along with Amazon’s Zoox in SF and Las Vegas and the now-defunct General Motors-owned Cruise in SF, Phoenix, Miami, Nashville and several Texas cities) has historically operated. As Reddit forums have discussed for the past few years, once the weather gets rough, self-driving mode isn’t much help. As one user urged, “…don’t rely on a robot to drive you in the snow.”
Waymo anticipated concerns and doubts about driving in a place like Detroit known for its “harshest winter” and put out a blog post at the end of last month about driving in all types of weather. It claims its next generation driver tech has trained enough to handle snowy conditions.
Waymo says its AI can notice when there’s snow, slush or ice versus a normal, dry road and adjusts its behavior accordingly. “Each vehicle essentially acts as a mobile weather station, gathering data to inform its own driving decisions and share with the rest of the fleet in the city,” the post reads.
The need to conquer winter was inevitable. The robofleets can only drive around the same SF streets for so long battling the occasional sprinkle and late-night fog bank. Advanced imaging company Ubicept has been preparing imaging tech for more challenging conditions. And wondering when companies like Waymo would want to expand beyond the sun belt and coastal California. As Ubicept co-founder and CTO Tristan Swedish explained in a recent call, challenging scenarios like winter puts vision systems and sensor suites to the test.
“When you move to a more adverse weather scenario there are ways to overcome those challenges using advanced perception systems,” he said, contrasting the ease of summertime autonomous driving in “well-behaved environments” like SF and Vegas.
Swedish noted the trend to add more cameras, radar and LiDAR sensors to fight the limitations of seeing through things like nighttime fog and a snowstorm. But, “the more sensors you have the more likely you have to fail,” he said. “It makes the system less reliable, and more expensive.”
Companies like Ubicept want to deploy an AI-based solution: Software that can separate light from a headlight bouncing off fog or a snow bank versus the road. Humans can’t do that with the naked eye, but with an approach called gated imaging technology, reliable autonomous driving in more places is theoretically possible. “You don’t have to build a new sensor system,” he assured.
But more robotaxis in more places during more times of the year might not be what people want. After a Waymo struck and killed a neighborhood cat in San Francisco last month, a local supervisor introduced a resolution to give counties more say about robotaxi activity. In California companies like Waymo are regulated through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and CA DMV, both state-level entities.
So while winter is coming, don’t expect the autonomous taxis (and the companies that run them) to be ready for it yet.
