Tesla to Launch Bay Area Robotaxis With Safety Drivers
Lyft to add autonomous shuttles in 2026, SF Waymo expansion may have been leaked by a support page, and why some Uber drivers are not worried about Uber’s robotaxi plans
Hey, it’s Harry! Welcome to the 44 new subscribers who have signed up since our last newsletter. I’m excited to have you join the 2,196 AV enthusiasts, executives, and industry professionals who are already on board.
Top Stories of the Week
Tesla tells staff it plans to roll out its robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekend (link). The Bay Area geofence is expected to be wide — covering Marin, much of the East Bay, San Francisco itself, and reaching all the way down to San Jose. Since they haven’t gotten regulatory approval in California though, the service will launch with a safety driver in the driver's seat, able to control the brakes and steering — a shift from Austin, where safety drivers ride in the passenger seat with only limited control.
I’m not sure why Tesla is expanding with an even more limited version of their supervised robotaxi program when they haven’t made much progress in Austin yet but it’s not exactly out of character for Elon.
On that note, one thing that stood out to me from Tesla’s earnings call this week was that the company has only racked up 7,000 miles in Austin so far. Assuming there are 11 vehicles and 1 month of operations, that is just 159 miles per car/week of paid robotaxi rides.
Yeah. Have, you know, more than 7,000 miles operating in Austin area. It’s you know, just because service is new, we have handful of vehicles, right now, but then we are trying to expand the service, in terms of both the area and also the number of vehicles both in Austin and other locations. So far, you know, the there’s, like, no notable safety critical incidents there. You know, sometimes we have our own, restrictions as to, for example, be resting on our speed limit to 40 miles per hour course.
This number is much lower than what I would have expected. And for comparison, a full time rideshare driver will drive about 1,000 miles per week.
Lyft to add autonomous shuttles in 2026 as Uber inks more self-driving deals (link).
Big Waymo expansion in San Francisco may have been leaked by a support page (link).
AV 2.0: How Wayve is Building Scalable, Mapless and End to End AI (link). My latest interview with Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve. We discussed their innovative end-to-end AI model that can drive any vehicle anywhere without relying on pre-mapping. And we also chatted about the scalability of their software, integration with different hardware and sensor architectures, and its application in both consumer and shared fleet markets.
Cool Rides
‘🚘Today I tried Waymo for the first time. I’ll admit it: I had mixed feelings as I stepped into the car’ (link).
‘I continue to be amazed by the technology advances in the automotive industry - and it only seems to be accelerating (pun intended) as the years advance!..I had the chance to introduce my wife to Waymo on a trip to Santa Monica’ (link).
AVs/Humans behaving badly
‘Waymo almost drives onto a tow truck, then just stops. All while a vehicle was getting impounded in LA (link).’ Wow, now that’s an edge case.
‘Do they actually just send out Waymos with cracked glass and hope no one says anything? (link).’ More likely that the damage is recent and no one has reported it yet.
Waymo detour leaves SF tourist temporarily stuck inside garage with other robotaxis (link). Guess this Waymo was a bit homesick.. 😂
Waymo rear-ended near Golden Gate Park (link).
Other Stuff
We may not have flying cars, but more food delivery bots are coming to L.A. (link, no paywall). Even though Waymo has gotten most of the praise when it comes to autonomy, I think delivery robots could end up having a big impact too. In theory, autonomous operations should be a lot simpler since they’re at much lower speeds and if anything goes wrong, they can come to an immediate stop, and wait for a human teleoperator to take over.
Delivery bots are ideal for short distance deliveries, high traffic areas and when there’s not much parking - coincidentally, the exact type of rides that human couriers hate. Especially in car-centric cities like LA. A majority of courier pay also stems from tips so when you remove that from the equation, the cost of delivery gets cut in half.
Uber drivers aren't worried about the company's driverless car plans. Who's going to handle tune-ups? (link). Previously did an unscientific poll for drivers in The Rideshare Guy audience and 30% of them said they were ‘extremely worried’ about AVs.
‘China now has more and more fully driverless taxis on the roads!’ (link). And ICYMI, check out my podcast with Helen Pan, from Apollo Go, the largest robotaxi operator in China (link).
From Futurama to DARPA, self-driving vehicles have held allure for a century (link).
‘Waymo is a godsend for working parents. Need to hand off the baby between meetings? Put them in a Waymo and send them to your partner across town. Impossible before now. Really grateful we have this technology’ (link). Most people got the joke but teens can ride in Phoenix all by themselves.
What will it take for robotaxis to go global? (link, no paywall).
Waymo Charging Extra When Booked Out To An Hour Now? (link). So two things may be happening here. Prices go up during peak times (i.e. weekday rush hour) and/or they need to make sure a car is available - which hurts utilization. Scheduled trips always cost more for the latter reason.
Lucid–Uber: How Saudi Arabia’s PIF Is Bringing Together Its Two Investments (link). This reminds me of the Uber-Fair partnership, with Softbank as a large investor in both. Seems like smart business to me considering Lucid’s stock price popped after the announcement, and PIF is the largest shareholder.
Protest held against Waymo in Boston as city council holds hearing on self-driving cars (link). I’m guessing this is the first of many protests.
Perfect fit in the Waymo ✅🏌️♂️ (link).
Neat Jobs
Product Manager, Extreme Weather at Waymo (link) via Robert Chen. Sounds like Waymo will be tackling cold weather soon enough.
Staff Software Engineer, Evaluation Applications at Waymo (link) via Lijuan Yan.
Shout-outs
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Until next week.
-Harry