This week’s edition is brought to you by MOIA America — a mobility technology provider helping agencies, operators, and businesses launch, manage, and scale autonomous driving ecosystems.

Top Story of the Week

Lucid Motors has a potential robotaxi partner for Europe (link). Bolt is partnering with Lucid to develop and deploy at least 25,000 fully autonomous vehicles across multiple European cities and countries, as part of its broader goal of having 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035. The vehicles will be based on Lucid’s upcoming Midsize platform and use NVIDIA’s Hyperion autonomous driving hardware, while Bolt plans to own and operate the fleet.

There are still some important details missing though. Bolt hasn’t actually placed an order for 25,000 vehicles, no money has changed hands, and the companies haven’t announced a deployment timeline or most importantly, named the autonomous driving software provider.

Even with those questions unresolved, Bolt is clearly spending more time and money in the AV space, with Lucid now joining Stellantis and Pony.ai as major partners. It’s another sign that Bolt sees autonomous vehicles as an important part of its long-term ride-hailing strategy.

I’m excited to dig into this partnership and hear more about Bolt’s AV ambitions with their CEO on the podcast later this month. Stay tuned!

For Lucid, the robotaxi opportunity is also starting to look meaningful. Between this partnership and its separate agreement with Uber and Nuro for at least 35,000 vehicles in the U.S., Lucid now has potential robotaxi programs covering at least 60,000 vehicles.

Waymo Makin’ Moves

Waymo opens robotaxi service in Las Vegas (link).

The Alphabet-owned company said Monday it will invite public riders on a rolling basis, following a robotaxi launch playbook it has followed in 14 other cities. Waymo is starting with “dozens” of its new Ojai minivan robotaxis, which will serve an area of Las Vegas that includes the Strip south of Highway 589 and into Boulder Junction, according to a spokesperson.

Related: The fleet size at launch is “dozens” according to Waymo (link).

Waymo to Start Tokyo Robotaxi Service Next Year in Asia Push (link, no paywall).

Waymo will partner with Japanese taxi firms Go Inc. and Nihon Kotsu Co. to start a fully autonomous service in Tokyo in 2027, it said Tuesday. The companies expect to start with a small fleet and then expand gradually to 100 vehicles.

Waymo now testing fully autonomously in Pittsburgh with safety technician behind the wheel (link).

Waymo restarts San Antonio service 5 months after flooding troubles (link).

Other Stuff

Drone Startup Zipline in Talks on About $1 Billion Raise at $20 Billion Valuation (link, no paywall).

NHTSA orders Tesla to prove its Cybercab is legal to sell, under oath (link).

The agency issued a formal Special Order on September 10 demanding that the company show, under oath, how a vehicle with no steering wheel, no pedals, and no mirrors complies with federal safety standards written for human drivers. Tesla has until September 30 to respond.

May Mobility to go public in SPAC deal at $1.4B valuation (link). For smaller AV companies without Waymo or Zoox-level resources, this asset-light model may be the more realistic path to scale. Companies like May Mobility and Nuro are both increasingly focused on providing the autonomy stack while partners handle the vehicles and operations.

The transaction with ACP Holdings Acquisition Corp. implies a $1.4 billion pro forma enterprise value and could provide the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based AV startup with up to $337 million in gross proceeds. That includes $217 million from the SPAC’s trust, assuming no redemptions, plus a $120 million fully committed from private investors through a so-called PIPE financing.

Powering the Future of Autonomous Mobility for Cities and Businesses, Today

MOIA America develops autonomous mobility solutions designed to help transform how people move through cities and communities. The MOIA brand’s turnkey autonomous mobility platform combines a purpose-built autonomous vehicle, an integrated self-driving hardware and software system, and a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform that enables operators to launch and scale autonomous transportation services. MOIA America is currently testing in U.S. markets, including Los Angeles, Austin, and Orlando.

Mayor Mamdani has announced more than 100 policies to make NYC streets safer over the next 10 years (link). AVs are notably absent from this list, but I think they should be pursued in parallel to everything the Mayor mentioned. Safer street design, lower speeds and better enforcement can affect every road user immediately, while AVs will take years to reach meaningful scale in New York, or really any city.

Riding a Pony.ai Fully Driverless Robotaxi in Croatia! (link). Impressive to see how smoothly it handled a wide variety of situations.

‘*No retrofitting required. Straight from Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore (HMGICS) to Motional’s Las Vegas Technical Center! Arriving fully assembled from the production line, all the IONIQ 5 robotaxis need is Motional decals’ (link).

‘Waymo is hiring a Charging Automation Lead. Job is to build a “zero-touch” charging network for its AV fleet including robotic charging arms’ (link). Very cool, and I imagine they’re looking to partner with companies like Rocsys on the automation piece.

‘Two #robotaxi interviews landed in my inbox 48 hours apart. Different publications, different founders, same argument: the hard part of autonomy is no longer the driving’ (link).

Wayve brings a new approach to robotaxi race (link).

‘Another great conversation from the set of AV Weekly! We were thrilled to welcome Harry Campbell to the set of AV Weekly for a conversation about all things autonomous — from where the technology stands today to where autonomous mobility may be headed next’ (link). Had fun recording this episode for their AV Weekly series which premieres on September 22 (link).

Virginia Panel Recommends DMV-Run Pilot for Self-Driving Cars (link).

Beep closes Series B to accelerate commercial deployment of autonomous mobility networks (link).

Beep announced the close of a Series B funding round, bringing its total capital raised to approximately $130 million. The round was led by Mobileye with participation from existing investors.

‘As of mid-2026, over 60% of US warehouses had integrated some form of physical AI’ (link).

War over robotaxis in NYC heats up after retracted Waymo report and ‘Autokill’ novel (link).

‘This town ain’t big enough for the two of us’ (link).

What else we're reading/listening to

I Tried to Hail a Waymo on Lyft 16 Times in Nashville. Here’s What Happened (link). Our latest guest post from former lidar salesman and independent AV tester recounts his 16 failed attempts to hail a Waymo through Lyft, getting his account permanently disabled, and the late-night rides that finally made the ordeal worthwhile. It’s already getting some love on Reddit too (link).

Bringing Physical AI to a Billion Machines - Applied Intuition Co-founder Peter Ludwig (link). My latest podcast, where we discuss how physical AI differs from digital AI, Applied Intuition’s autonomous trucking vertical, the role of simulation in validating AV systems, and what it will take to move from safety-driver testing to fully driverless operations at scale.

ADSN by James Borow and Daniel Druger: 30 minutes: How 450K Dashcams Are Training the Future of Physical Al ft. Zach Greenberger (link).

Jason Calacanis on the Robotaxi Endgame (link). Good interview with Jason on all things AV, Uber x Waymo and Tesla. I don’t agree that Waymo will need to buy a car company if/when Alphabet spins it out. I think they’re more likely to keep partnering with multiple OEMs.

I do like his theory on Uber though. With more than $10B a year in free cash flow, they could absolutely go out and buy an AV operator. Investors clearly aren’t loving the near-term economics of the partnership strategy, so at some point it may make sense to own more of the stack.

Unsupervised with Dave Ferguson: Is E2E Safe for Self-Driving? With Aurora’s Chris Urmson (link). Cool to see two long time friends and leaders talk self driving.

AV Events

Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Workforce Summit, hosted by the US AV Jobs Coalition, is happening October 19, 2026 in Columbus, Ohio (link).

“Will Autonomous Vehicles Improve the Environment? A Skeptical Conversation” during Climate Week NYC, featuring Jeffrey Tumlin, on Wednesday, September 23, from 3:00–4:30 PM at 15 W 39th St, 10th Floor, NY (link).

Related: Robotaxi Lessons From San Francisco With Jeffrey Tumlin (link).

AVs/Humans behaving badly

Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had ‘ghost gun,’ authorities say (link). There was a bit of controversy over this and the LA Times wrote, “This wasn’t the first time Waymo has tattled on alleged troublemakers.” But if there’s ever a good reason for a robotaxi to ‘tattle’ on its passengers, a loaded AR-style ghost gun seems like one of them.

Two young people riding in an autonomous vehicle were arrested in San Francisco after authorities allegedly found them in possession of an illegal “ghost gun”... The incident took place shortly before 4 a.m. on Sept. 3 in the city’s Richmond District, the Police Department said… Officers searched the car and discovered a loaded, AR-style assault rifle, as well as “suspected marijuana and mace spray,” authorities said in the statement.

‘Lousy place to do a pick up’ (link).

‘Good thing it doesn’t need to see through the windshield’ (link).

‘Two completely different drone delivery experiences in Arizona’ (link). Zipline takes the cake :)

‘Somebody pooped themselves in this Waymo’ (link). Customer service agent was speechless lol.

Neat Jobs

Our article on how to get hired at Waymo is now #WaymoCertified! Check it out here if you missed it (link).

Commercial Partnerships Team Lead at Moove AV, via Ming Maa (link).

Senior Technical Program Manager - Vehicle Platform & Autonomy Integration at Zoox (link) via Kaushik Raghu.

Strategy & BizOps Lead, Germany at Waymo (link) via Thomas Yao and Ben Loewenstein.

Manager, Resilience Risk at Waymo (link) via Piet van Os.

2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Safety Research, Human Behavior Analytics (link) via Azadeh Dinparastdjadid.

2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Machine Learning, Computer Vision (link) via Meng Wang.

Job Moves

Former Waymo CFO jumps to self-driving startup Wayve (link).

Lauren Svensson: Instacart -> Waymo (link).

Yeyan Shi: NovaWeg Consulting -> Lyft (link).

Alanna Iverson Simon: Dandy -> Waymo (link).

Hélène B: Uber AV Labs (link).

Neha Rao: Tesla -> Nuro (link).

Until next week :)

-Harry

The Driverless Digest

Bolt and Lucid Plan to Deploy 25,000…