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.
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.
The EV company says the staff cuts are intended to “improve operational effectiveness and optimize our resources,” TechCrunch reports. An internal memo added that the company is still focused on “further expansion into the robotaxi market,” following the launch of a robotaxi collaboration with Nuro and Uber last year.
Turns out, if you leave a Waymo door open, someone gets paid to close it, opening up some novel opportunities for improving the economy.
tsmuse:
So you’re saying we can create jobs if we call a bunch of waymos, open their doors, and then walk away?
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Since Waymo doesn’t have a vehicle with automatic doors, it has to pay on gig workers for help. (The Washington Post covered this phenomenon recently.) Just another example of the invisible human labor that’s required to keep these autonomous systems afloat.
Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told Bloomberg the robotaxi company was on track to reach the 1 million weekly rides milestone by the end of 2026. The company is currently provides about 400,000 rides per week across six US cities. Waymo just announced that its sixth-generation vehicle is going to start accepting passengers in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Chinese automotive publication Gasgoo says the new companies are in talks to dramatically increase Waymo’s fleet of Hyundai EVs. The deal could be worth around $2.5 billion, assuming $50,000 per vehicle. But even if the report is true, don’t expect Waymo’s robotaxi fleet to suddenly grow by 50,000: the company has said it plans on adding only 2,000 more vehicles in 2026, for a total fleet size of 3,500. Waymo is currently testing and validating the Ioniq 5 and the Zeekr RT as its next two robotaxis.
Say that five times really fast! Uber has said it would use Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis in London, and now the company is adding Dubai as well, starting in March 2026.
As Waymo uses AI-generated 3D worlds to simulate driverless cars’ encounters with tornadoes, floods, and even elephants, one commenter wonders if they could try AI school buses next.
cowboyfromspace:
They got elephants down but forgot about school buses?
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I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and articles claiming that Waymo’s robotaxis are being secretly controlled by teleoperators in the Philippines. The claims stem from a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week, during which a top Waymo executive told Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) that the company employs some remote operators overseas. But he was also clear that those operators aren’t actually controlling the vehicles. I watched all two hours of the hearing, and here’s what Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, had to say:
They do not remotely drive the vehicles. As you stated, Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations. And it’s an input, but the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks.
Now, as to some other robotaxi operators…
Geely may build cars in the US, but their software still has to follow cybersecurity restrictions.
By trying to drive more assertively, Waymo appears to be adopting some dangerous human habits.
