Lucid, Uber and Nuro Unveil Futuristic New Robotaxi at CES
Waymo rebrands Zeekr, Pony.ai’s robotaxi fleet reaches 1159 vehicles, and why robotaxis create a new 'pink tax'
Top Stories from CES
Lucid, Uber, and Nuro unveil new Gravity robotaxi with road testing underway (link). The three companies made the big reveal at CES in Las Vegas this week, and have already begun road testing of the vehicle. The unveil also gave us a first look at the vehicle’s real-world UX, including interactive screens that greet riders, control climate and music, and show the robotaxi’s planned route in real time. I like the look of the halo on top.
NVIDIA Announces Alpamayo Family of Open-Source AI Models and Tools to Accelerate Safe, Reasoning-Based Autonomous Vehicle Development (link).
Waymo is rebranding its Zeekr robotaxi (link). The vehicles will now be called ‘Ojai’ after the village in the Topatopa Mountains above LA, known for it’s art community and focus on wellness. According to a Waymo spokesperson, this is because the U.S. public isn’t as familiar with the Zeekr brand. I was surprised that Waymo didn’t make any big announcements at CES like other top AV brands. It would have been exciting to see them announce a launch date for the Ojai vehicle for example, but we did get this nugget:
Waymo employees, and their family and friends, are now able to hail the Zeekr van in San Francisco and Phoenix — typically one of the last steps before it becomes available to the public.
Related: Waymo’s CES booth (link).
Kodiak taps Bosch to scale its self-driving truck tech (link). Kodiak announced they’re working with Bosch to develop a hardware and software system that can give heavy trucks autonomous driving capabilities.
‘I got a first look at Tensor’s Robocar’ (link).
Zoox’s CES booth (link).
Other Stuff
We Still Don’t Know if Robotaxis Are Safer Than Human Drivers (link, no paywall).
Beyond the highway: Waabi’s bet on door-to-door autonomy (link). An interesting take from Lior Ron, founder of Uber Freight, and now chief operating officer at Waabi:
Autonomy on highways only doesn’t really scale. It has room in the ecosystem — 5% to 10% or 15% of the future network will be hub-to-hub. But the vast majority of freight will be moved door-to-door, facility-to-facility, end-to-end. That’s how the supply chain is built today. This is how the supply chain is going to be built in the future as well. So I think for us this is a major unlock. I would say it’s very clear — the unspoken truth in the industry
Inside Daniel Lurie’s handling of Waymo crisis during S.F. power outages (link, no paywall).
Exceeding its annual target, Pony.ai’s Robotaxi fleet reaches 1159 vehicles (link).
Safe, Autonomous, and More Expensive. Why Robotaxis Create a New ‘Pink Tax’ (link). Interesting article I was featured in discussing how riders—especially women—tend to pay a premium for Waymo rides due to the added safety compared with traditional rideshare options.
The net effect of a significant price difference is that men will choose the cheaper option and women are more likely to pay the premium for a driverless car. This becomes what’s called a “pink tax.” Waymo isn’t explicitly charging female riders more; some women will just end up paying more because of market dynamics.
Is it even worth mentioning that Elon Musk blew past his own Full Self-Driving goals again? (link, no paywall).
Waymos are now coming for your coveted San Francisco parking spots (link, no paywall). Also excited to have Rachel moderate a panel at our AV Summit.
Mercedes to offer autonomous driving tech for US city streets (link).
The system, which enables a vehicle to drive from a parking lot to a destination, navigating city intersections, making turns and obeying traffic lights, is likely to pose competition to Tesla, the only automaker that offers a similar product, called Full Self-Driving, in the United States.
What else we’re reading/listening to
a16z’s “it’s time to build” by Alex Immerman: Self-driving cars: social robots that save lives (link).
Lessons from the Great Waymo Outage of 2025 - Brad Templeton (link). My latest podcast episode where we discussed the nitty gritty of the recent Waymo outage in San Francisco, and how transparent AV companies should be when things go wrong. We also talked about how Waymo can learn from past incidents at Cruise, and whether systems like Waymo are ready to handle ‘edge cases’ such as dead intersections, among other topics.
AVs/Humans behaving badly
Waymo stuck on light rail tracks (link).
Waymo robotaxi blocks traffic in Miami (link).
‘Absolutely horrible experience 1/10 trying to get a Zoox vehicle this evening in Las Vegas…’ (link). Although to be fair, most of the feedback I saw about Zoox during CES was positive (see below).
Cool Rides
‘Just tried Zoox autonomous vehicle. I rate it 5/5. It is truly outstanding’ (link).
‘Zoox, loved this experience in Las Vegas’ (link).
‘There are Zoox driverless vehicles all over the strip’ (link).
Neat Jobs
Chief of Staff at Terawatt (link) via Peter Cohen.
Digital Media Lead at Waymo (link) via Thomas Malec.
Senior Software Engineer, Robot Data Platform at Zoox (link) via Andy Zheng.
You can check out our new AV job board where we post all of the roles we feature (link). If people like it, I will find a way to turn it into something a bit prettier.
Job Moves
Trevor Scott: Waymo Roadside Assistance at Waymo ➡ TBD (link).
Matthew Fisher: Staff Strategy Manager at Zoox ➡ Strategic Partnerships at Waymo (link).
Bhavesh Goswami: Information Security Leader at Smartsheet ➡ Director, Information Security at Zoox (link).
Andrew Kuzmik: Director of Partnerships at Comulate ➡ Director of Business Development at Terawatt (link).
Brad Hoffa: Digital Operations Director at PPG ➡ Head of Operations at Autolane (link).
Shout-outs
Big thanks to TDD readers Andrew B, Jack K and Tom F for referring new subscribers. If there’s someone you think would enjoy TDD, just forward this email to them or use the referral button below.
Until next week :)
-Harry