Self-driving cars are finally here, and how they are deployed will change how we get around forever. From Tesla to Google to Uber to all the major automakers, we bring you complete coverage of the race to develop fully autonomous vehicles. This includes helpful explanations about the technology and policies that underpin the movement to build driverless cars.
First, Waymo vehicles needed a software update to stop trying to drive through flooded roads. Then, a neighborhood in Atlanta was overwhelmed by empty Waymos that caused a traffic jam in a cul-de-sac.
Meanwhile, a driver in Dallas caught a Waymo blazing through a red light at a busy intersection.
Business Insider thinks so, pointing to some recent evidence like Uber’s CTO tweeting about a “scary Waymo moment” and an Uber white paper that emphasizes a hybrid model of human- and robot-powered rides over an AV only model. Driverless Digest’s Harry Campbell is also predicting that Waymo and Uber’s partnership may be running out of steam.
[Business Insider]
In an earnings call last month, Elon Musk was feeling bullish that Full Self-Driving (Supervised) would soon be authorized in the European Union, especially after the Level 2 automated system was approved for use in the Netherlands. But according to emails seen by Reuters, EU regulators are in no rush to give the green light. They have issues with FSD, including “the system’s tendency to speed, whether it is safe to use on icy roads and drivers’ ability to circumvent features designed to prevent cell-phone use.”
Di Jin says the robo taxi took off with his luggage still in the trunk. But the real issue is how the company handled the issue. First, it told him the cab couldn’t be turned around to return his items, then it tried to charge him for shipping.
California cops will now be allowed to give tickets to self-driving cars for traffic violations, raising some interesting philosophical questions.
stable_genius_hatter:
Do androids dream of electric driving school?
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Emergency response officials from San Francisco and Austin met with regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a private meeting last month to clear the air about robotaxis, according to a recording obtained by Wired. Waymo vehicles are “freezing” in front of fire stations and committing more traffic violations, the officials said. Waymo declined to attend the meeting.
For the first time, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles approved new regulations allowing for the testing and deployment of heavy-duty autonomous trucks. The agency also expanded its current rules to allow law enforcement to cite operators for moving violations involving their autonomous vehicles. AV companies are also now required to respond to first responder calls within 30 seconds, and to allow officials to clear AVs from emergency zones.
Eight months after the iOS app launched, Tesla has released an Android version of its Robotaxi app. The service expanded to Houston and Dallas last week, but still seems to only have a small number of vehicles actually on the road.
[Google Play]
The Amazon-owned company is testing robotaxi rides with employees as passengers to and from the Las Vegas airport. The plan is to offer the service publicly in the near future. But as many have noted, it may be tough going in a vehicle without any dedicated storage space for luggage.
The company said today its robotaxis in the two Florida cities would be available to anyone using its ridehail app. Waymo typically invites select riders on a rolling basis before opening up its service to anyone with the app. The company take riders on Miami’s freeways, so routes could be a little quicker than usual.
Uber and Volkswagen are now testing their first robotaxis on the streets of LA, in anticipation of launching a commercial service later this year. The all-electric VW ID Buzz minivans are using autonomous technology developed by VW subsidiary, MOIA America. The company plans on scaling the fleet to 100 vehicles during the testing phase. Each vehicle will have a safety driver ready to take over in case something goes wrong.
The robotaxi company said today that it will start accepting its first public riders in Music City. Customers, who will be invited to ride on a rolling basis, can initially hail a ride through the Waymo app, and then later matched with a vehicle through the Lyft app. Lyft will also handle fleet services, such as cleaning, maintenance, and EV charging. Waymo first started testing its vehicles in Nashville in early 2025. For those keeping score, the company now operates commercially in 11 cities.
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) published a new report today following an investigation on how the companies use Remote Assistance Operators (RAOs), and of the 14 companies he sent a letter to, “every AV company refused to disclose how frequently their RAOs intervene to help their self-driving cars,” according to a press release.
Tesla and Lucid are raising eyebrows with their two-seater autonomous vehicles. But ridehail fleets have very different needs for EVs than retail buyers do, and that matters.
The company has a roadside assistance team that it dispatches to move vehicles when they get trapped. But sometimes Waymo needs emergency responders to actually get behind the wheel. TechCrunch got the 911 dispatches and incident reports from California:
“Highway patrol turned everyone around, but unfortunately our car is not able to turn around,” one of Waymo’s remote assistance workers told an area 911 dispatcher, according to a recording obtained by TechCrunch in a public records request. The employee wanted officers on the scene to drive the robotaxi away, and to arrange transportation for the passenger inside.
The automaker plans to start supervised public-road testing on limited-access highways across California and Michigan, with the goal of reaching 200 vehicles this year. According to GM:
Each vehicle will operate with a trained test driver at the wheel who is capable of taking manual control at any time. This marks a significant transition from manual data collection to active automated technology testing on public roads.
GM has said it will launch its first hands-free, eyes-off Level 3 driving feature in the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028.
Raffi Krikorian, who now serves as Mozilla’s CTO, writes in The Atlantic that he’s rethinking the relationship between humans and machines after a near-death experience in his Tesla.
Full Self-Driving works almost all of the time—Tesla’s fleet of cars with the technology logs millions of miles between serious incidents, by the company’s count. And that’s the problem: We are asking humans to supervise systems designed to make supervision feel pointless. A machine that constantly fails keeps you sharp. A machine that works perfectly needs no oversight. But a machine that works almost perfectly? That’s where the danger lies.
Uber out here collecting robotaxi companies like they’re Pokémon! The majority Hyundai-owned Motional is operating a fleet of autonomous Ioniq 5s in Las Vegas. The arrangement is similar to Uber’s other AV partners: riders who indicate they’re interested in robotaxis may get matched with one of Motional’s vehicles.
The cars will have safety drivers behind the wheel, though perhaps not for long: Motional says it’ll remove them by the end of the year.
The ridehailing giant adds another robotaxi partner to its swelling stable of firms. Uber customers who indicate an openness for driverless could be matched with a Zoox robotaxi. The partnership will launch in Las Vegas this summer, followed by Los Angeles by mid-2027. Zoox will also continue to offer its service through its own app.
The Amazon-owned company with the toaster-shaped robotaxis is now testing its vehicles in Phoenix and Dallas. Zoox will start manually mapping with its retro-fitted Toyota SUVs before leveling up to fully autonomous testing with its purpose-built vehicles.
The company is also actively testing with passengers in California, though it has yet to receive a permit for a fully public, paid commercial robotaxi service in the state.
The robotaxi company has yet to obtain permits for driverless commercial operations in either city, but it typically deploys manually driven vehicles to gather mapping data while its applications move through the bureaucracy in the background. The news comes after Waymo announced the commencement of driverless operations in four new cities in Texas and Florida earlier this week, bringing its total robotaxi markets in the US to 10.
[Waymo]
The robotaxi company said today that it will start accepting its first public riders in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. First up will be customers from those four cities who have downloaded the Waymo app; other customers will be added on a rolling basis, the company said. That brings Waymo’s total number of markets to 10, which is double from where it was a couple of months ago.
