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In the past week, there has been a flood of robotaxi news, mostly driven by Waymo’s flurry of expansion announcements.
Waymo, which has a commercial robotaxi service in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, has added more cities to its list. It will manually start driving (a precursor to driverless testing and deployment) in Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa next year. Other cities that the Alphabet-owned self-driving company plans to deploy in 2026 are Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami (it just removed safety drivers), Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. It’s also testing in New York City and plans to offer commercial rides internationally starting with London and Tokyo.
Waymo wasn’t the only company to make some AV news. Tesla received a ride-hailing permit in Arizona — the last regulatory hurdle to launch a robotaxi service there. And Zoox is starting to open its custom-built robotaxis to the public in San Francisco through its early rider program.
All of this has me poking at the question: When will robotaxis reach a tipping point that will lead to fundamental changes in how people think about moving from Point A to Point B? And perhaps more unclear, is how will that affect society and industries (old and new)? I can’t answer the second question, but I have some baked ideas about the first one.
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In short (and in my view), we are not there yet.
It’s not just about the volume of one player. Waymo’s rapid deployment will certainly introduce the idea and experience to more people. But it’s not quite enough.
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