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
Tesla Begins Offering Rides in a Car Without a Steering Wheel (link, no paywall). First impression: impressive, and I’m excited to try it when we head to Austin for our Urban Autonomy Summit on 10/14. I like the way the doors open vertically, although I’m not sure how practical they’ll be in the real world. There’s also a ton of trunk space, but only having two seats still feels a little strange for a robotaxi.
On Thursday, Tesla said on its website that people could hail the Cybercab and “use it for errands, commuting and more.” The company said that in addition to two passengers, the vehicle would have room for “luggage, golf clubs, scooters and more.”
‘My First Ride in the Cybercab’ (link).
My Cybercab rides are more than 50% cheaper than Uber rides (link). Pricing doesn’t mean much yet but interesting to see where Tesla is starting at.
‘I Made a Bet with Tesla’ (link).
‘Feds launch investigation into Tesla’s Cybercab deployment’ (link).
NHTSA said Friday that Tesla told the agency it self-certified the Cybercab as being compliant with all of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). Automakers traditionally self-certify whether their vehicles comply with FMVSS rules. In the filing, the agency said it was opening the investigation to “examine the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues.”
Other Stuff
Uber, Wayve Unleash Supervised Robotaxis on London’s Winding Streets (link, no paywall). This is a cool milestone, and kudos to Bloomberg for getting the headline right. It still bothers me every time I see people celebrating the launch of “autonomous vehicles” when the vehicles are, in fact, not autonomous yet lol.
Passengers who order a ride through Uber may be offered a trip in one of 15 Wayve-powered Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles.A trained safety driver holding a private hire license from Transport for London will sit behind the wheel and take control of the vehicle if needed.
Bloomberg took a test drive in one of the Wayve-powered robotaxis. Over roughly 40 minutes, the car showed human-like nudging behavior to cut into a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic, handled tight lane changes, a protest in Parliament Square and pedestrians stepping out erratically into the road.
The safety driver took over twice. Once when the vehicle was trying to merge into gridlock and was briefly blocking oncoming traffic, and again to switch lanes to get around a few stationary cars. The rest of the time, his hands hovered just below the steering wheel as it turned on its own.
Avride: Following 100,000+ autonomous rides on Uber, we’ve expanded our Dallas robotaxi area to 31 square miles, more than tripling in size since launch (link). And it also sounds like they’re on track to remove the safety driver in H1 2027.
Waymo expands driverless robotaxi service to 3 major US cities (link).
Waymo on Tuesday began welcoming its first public riders in Denver, San Diego and Tampa, expanding its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to 14 cities. The Alphabet-owned self-driving car company said tens of thousands of people in each newly launched market have already signed up for access. The company plans to gradually add riders before eventually opening the service to all users.
Zoox: Next stop: Houston and San Diego! (link).
Waymo Taps Pimco, Blackstone for $3 Billion in First Debt Deal (link, no paywall).
Atlanta rideshare drivers push back against robotaxis (link). I’m not a fan of protectionist policies like prohibiting Waymo from picking up and dropping off at airports, but I do like the idea of a worker transition fund that could help drivers retrain or otherwise adjust as autonomous vehicles take on a larger share of rides.
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.
Amazon’s Zoox expands its robotaxi service to Las Vegas airport (link).
Uber and Big Taxi unite in battle against Waymo (link, no paywall). Let’s be real, Uber hasn’t suddenly become a champion of driver protection. The company is in a real bind because Waymo is effectively the only AV operator in town right now. Until more of Uber’s AV partners are ready to compete in the United States, trying to slow Waymo down may be the only meaningful near-term move Uber has. The irony of Uber teaming up with the taxi industry it spent years disrupting is rich though.
Related: Uber Wants It Both Ways With Autonomous Vehicles (link).
Saudi AI Firm Humain, Applied Intuition Partner on Self-Driving Trucks (link, no paywall). Stay tuned for our podcast interview (subscribe here) with Applied Intuition CTO and Co-founder Peter Ludwig!
Robotaxis Are the Next Dystopian Villain (link, no paywall).
Waymo goes on offense ahead of Tesla’s Cybercab launch (link). I’m team LiDAR, but that doesn’t mean cameras can’t work. Tesla should be behind Waymo at this point since it’s taking more of a bottom-up approach, while the knock on Waymo has always been cost. Tesla has already proven it can build and sell cars profitably, while Waymo has proven it can do autonomous driving. Now Tesla needs to prove it can be as safe as Waymo, and Waymo needs to prove it can turn all of this into a profitable business. Time will tell.
TaskUs: New speaker alert! Tom Tang from May Mobility is joining Forward ‘26. Be in the room to hear his take on scaling AV operations, global expansion and the future of transportation networks (link). I’m also excited to be moderating this panel!
Introducing Waymo’s brand store (link). I bought the car and the pin set but will gladly take a free water bottle 😂
‘Normal day in Phoenix’ (link).
Waymo’s cheaper robotaxis collide with China crackdown (link).
‘Waymo fleet breakdown update as they expand in 14 cities in the US (San Diego, Denver, Tampa live for select riders today)’ (link).
What else we’re reading/listening to
Why Crash Rate Only Tells Half of the AV Safety Story (link). Former Lyft safety leaders Naomi Yarin and Preet.Anand explain why crash rates alone are an incomplete measure of AV safety and why autonomous vehicles need to be evaluated across a broader range of risks and real-world interactions.
Scaling Autonomous Trucking with Gatik CEO Gautam Narang (link). Our latest podcast where TDD Editor Ben Hubbard sits down with Gautam to discuss Gatik’s focus on middle-mile freight, how it measures safety, and what it takes to turn contracted revenue into driverless deployments at scale, among other things.
Across the First Million by Christian Adelsberger, featuring Eduardo Rojas: #3 - “The physical world is hard” (link).
Urban Innovate TALKS by Henriette Cornet: How Austin Is Preparing for Robotaxis | Rachel Castignoli (link).
Related: It’s almost 30 days to our Urban Autonomy Summit Austin, presented by Nexar, happening October 14, and it’ll bring together some of the brightest minds in the AV industry in one of the most tech-forward cities in the U.S. Apply now to secure your spot before registration fills up! (link).
Voltera CEO, Frank Reig: Voltera Is Powering the Growth of Robotaxis (link).
Platform Aeronaut by Thomas Reiner: Everyone Is Playing a Different Robotaxi Game (link).
AVs/Humans behaving badly
‘In Pakistan, a man crashed into a police car while testing a driverless car he developed himself’ (link).
‘So.. Who got hungry for an I pace passenger side curtain airbag?’ (link).
‘Kilroy wuz here’ (link).
‘Waymo’s out here causing pile ups’ (link). More like Waymo rear-ended..
AV behaving “goodly” :)
‘One advantage of mounting sensors high on the Zoox robotaxi is a better view of the world around it’ (link). Wow, this is impressive!
Shout-outs
Big thanks to TDD readers at TaskUs, and to Calla S and Kara K for referring new subscribers. If there’s someone you think would enjoy TDD, feel free to forward this email or use the referral button below, and we’ll make sure to shout out your company.
Neat Jobs
2027 Summer Intern, MS/PhD, Data Science - Commercialization Testing at Waymo (link) via Sophia Valdez. Summer internships already?!
Lead Technical Program Manager, Platform Integration at Waabi (link) via Aaron Sullivan.
Learning Experience Designer at Applied Intuition (link) via Ani Chakraborty.
Job Moves
Allison Rose: HonorHealth -> Waymo (link).
Derek Mulvey: Rivian (link).
Elizabeth Gibbons: Aurora -> Waabi (link).
Until next week :)
-Harry
Such an exciting week. Best wishes to Wayve but unfortunately pessimistic: at CVPR their tech was so behind Tesla’s (whose act they immediately followed up) it was actually cringe-inducing. Hope they’ve made some miracles happen in the interim, but it feels to me more like “we have to launch with what we have right now or we won’t be able to raise again, whatever happens, happens.” Cybercab, weakly optimistic, I’m glad they held out from previous launch dates as FSD in HW4 Teslas really hasn’t felt ready until very recently. It’s still going wave the white flag in the same situations though: heavy rain, snow etc, that Waymo is handles easily, probably fine in Austin, but gonna be rough up north.