GoKawiilRobotaxis are expanding. So is the fight over the rules governing them.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul withdrew a proposal earlier this year that would have opened the door to driverless robotaxis outside New York City after taxi drivers, unions, and state lawmakers opposed it. Six months later, commercial driverless service remains illegal in the state, and legalization efforts are stalled.
In DC, labor unions are fighting legislation that would legalize commercial robotaxis, while lawmakers are weighing a 200-vehicle cap and a 15-cent-per-mile fee that would fund Metro upgrades and aid workers displaced by autonomous vehicles. A July City Council hearing on the proposal stretched for a grueling 10 hours.
In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie, a vocal supporter of robotaxis, is now calling for tougher robotaxi regulations after Waymos repeatedly snarled traffic during emergencies and major events. And as of July, California police can now formally cite autonomous-vehicle manufacturers when their driverless cars break traffic laws.
And while Congress has yet to pass comprehensive robotaxi legislation, federal regulators have stepped up their scrutiny. The Trump administration’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently warned autonomous-vehicle companies that vehicles unable to safely interact with police, firefighters, and other first responders pose a danger to the public.
Even in states that have broadly welcomed autonomous vehicles, governments are grappling with how to oversee them. Texas this year began enforcing new permitting requirements for commercial AV operators, while cities in Florida have complained that state preemption laws leave them with little power to respond to problems on their own streets.
Even in states that have broadly welcomed autonomous vehicles, governments are grappling with how to oversee them
Taxi drivers, labor unions, and safety advocates have fought autonomous vehicles for years. What’s changing is the scale and immediacy of the fight. Now that robotaxis have burst free from the pages of science fiction and onto actual city streets, policymakers are confronting a messier reality filled with questions about safety, regulation, growth, and jobs. They’re having to decide how quickly fleets should be allowed to expand, what companies must prove before they do, and how much control cities and states should have over their operations.
Waymo, the market leader, is currently operating more than 3,500 vehicles publicly in 11 US cities. Zoox — a purpose-built robotaxi without a steering wheel that bears a striking resemblance to a toaster — just began offering paid rides in Las Vegas and continues to offer free trips to users of its Explorer program in San Francisco as it collects feedback. It’s testing in a total of 10 cities and plans to extend the Explorer program to Austin and Miami later this year. Tesla, which began its Robotaxi rollout with a safety monitor aboard more than a year ago, appears to finally be growing its unsupervised fleet ahead of launching its purpose-built robotaxi, the Cybercab, later this month.
Still, for all the political attention, robotaxis remain a tiny share of the US ridehailing market. While Waymo now provides more than 500,000 paid rides a week, Uber handles about 40 million trips a day. At that scale, robotaxis haven’t yet displaced many driving jobs or fundamentally changed how cities move. But their visibility vastly exceeds their market share, especially when a driverless car stops in the wrong place during a blackout or interferes with an emergency response.
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