Uber, WeRide, and AVOMO to Bring Robotaxis to Spain
Tesla Self-Certifies Level 4 Autonomous Vehicles in Texas, Avride completes 60,000 trips for Uber riders, and Where Waymo batteries go when they retire
This week’s edition is brought to you by Rocsys – global leader in hands-free charging and fleet service solutions for electric and autonomous fleets.
Top Stories of the Week
WeRide, Uber, and AVOMO Bring Robotaxis to Madrid (link).
The service is expected to begin operations later this year, in collaboration with Madrid’s Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid), with rides available via the Uber app. The parties expect the fleet to scale progressively and will initially include trained vehicle operators, with WeRide, AVOMO and Uber committed to adding hundreds of Robotaxis as key performance milestones are met, including the expansion of fully driverless commercial service across core urban areas.
Other Stuff
Tesla expands service area of unsupervised robotaxis in Austin (link, no paywall).
Records from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles showed the company has 42 registered cars in the state as of Wednesday. A third-party robotaxi tracking website indicated that about 21 unsupervised cars were active.
Retired Waymo EV batteries will get a second life as grid storage (link).
For Waymo—which operates autonomous EVs that drive for hours at a time, providing a total of more than 500,000 paid trips a week—that means that “sometimes, our vehicles outlast our batteries,” says Adam Lenz, the company’s head of sustainability and environment. But even if that battery isn’t fit to power a car anymore, it can still store energy. And now, retired Waymo batteries will get a second life as grid storage, helping firm up electricity grids in the same areas where Waymo is active.
Uber to put 500 data-collection vehicles on the road this year (link).
The vehicle is not some radical design. Rather, it’s a Hyundai Ioniq 5 fitted with an incredible number of sensors on the top and sides… Uber said Wednesday that it plans to roll out 500 of these kitted-out Hyundai EVs globally this year. That fleet will be able to collect “2 million miles per month of high-fidelity data” for robotaxis. Uber expects 50 of these vehicles to be on the road by the summer.
‘One thing most mobility operators underestimate: Real estate is the hardest part of scaling…’ (link).
Wayve is launching an AI lab to look beyond self-driving cars (link, no paywall).
Multibay Hands-free Charging for Autonomous Fleets
We are excited to partner with Rocsys this month, the leading provider of hands-free charging infrastructure with deployments worldwide. To learn more about how the Rocsys M1, an overhead rail-mounted solution, can deliver up to 75% higher operational efficiency from existing staff, connect with Erin Galiger, Rocsys Director of North American Markets, at egaliger@rocsys.com.
Avride CEO, Dmitry Polishchuk: We have completed over 60,000 trips for Uber riders and doubled our service area in Dallas since the launch in December last year. Our fleet of 200+ cars (including R&D and Uber robotaxis) has driven over 1.3 million miles, with a million miles covered in the first five months of 2026 (link).
‘Cybercab driving itself out of the GigaTexas factory’ (link).
Engineering for the unlikely: How Zoox designs and tests edge cases (link).
‘Interesting Mercedes-Benz test vehicle spotted in San Francisco. Anyone know the details?’ (link).
Inside Uber’s strategy to avoid a head-on collision with autonomous cars (link, no paywall).
Waymo Halts Freeway Operations, Stops Service in Some Cities Without Clearly Communicating What’s Up (link). Here’s what I told PC Mag for this interview:
“Waymo needs to do a better job communicating, as a lot of people have come to rely on the service,” Campbell says. “We knew something was up for a few days before the official announcement, which makes caution understandable, but incidents like this could hurt trust if riders suddenly lose freeway access or see service limited by construction, weather, or other operational issues.”
Is This Self-Driving Pod The Future Of Indoor Transit? (link, no paywall).
‘I wonder how much the shift from Jaguar to Zeekr (and also Hyundai, eventually) vehicles will or will not affect Waymo’s “premium” brand positioning. From being picked up in a kinda cool Jaguar to a Pixar-looking minivan’ (link). I don’t think this will be much of an issue for the Zeekr, since it still feels purpose built and differentiated. The bigger brand positioning challenge may come with Waymo’s next vehicle: the Hyundai IONIQ 5, which is rapidly emerging as the autonomous vehicle industry’s platform of choice thanks to its software defined architecture. In addition to Waymo, it’s being used by Motional, Avride, Bliq, and now Uber, which plans to roll out 500 sensor equipped IONIQ 5s for data collection this year. As more operators converge on the same platform, the vehicle itself becomes less of a differentiator.
The AV Future Might Not Be Shared (link, no paywall).
Compared to robotaxis, personally owned AVs will be even more likely to expand total car use, since their appearance and amenities will reflect their owners’ preferences and they will always be available when requested. The sunk cost fallacy also suggests that those who have purchased AVs will take more car trips than if they had to pay separately for each ride.
Related: Robotaxi: Own or Rent? Revisited (link).
Waymo & Zeekr made a taxi for America! (link).
Campus delivery robots are becoming a robotics workforce pipeline (link).
‘Wait so in California a 17-year-old can drive a car but can’t be a passenger in a Waymo by herself?’ (link). I still think it’s strange that Waymo’s policy appears to be: if a rider is discovered to be under the age of 18, the vehicle can no longer continue the trip, regardless of where they are or what time it is (link).
Related: Tesla Self-Certifies Level 4 Autonomous Vehicles in Texas (link).
There’s a debate over the long-term market structure for autonomy (link).
Robotaxis Are Spreading Across the U.S.—and So Is the Backlash (link, no paywall).
‘We are building an autonomous future that is accessible to all fleets. [Tesla] Vehicle Management endpoints provide access to vehicle product information such as specifications, option details, pricing, warranty coverage, and eligibility for subscriptions and upgrades’ (link).
People are leaving a lot of weird stuff in their robotaxis (link).
Our Zeekr RT (Ojai) vs Jaguar I-PACE comparison chart from last week sparked some interesting discussion on LinkedIn (link).
What else we’re reading/listening to
A recording of the NYU Cardozo Robotaxi Symposium, that took place on May 28 at New York University School of Law (link), via Matthew Wansley.
Uber CEO on AI, Autonomous Vehicles, and the Future of Transportation (link).
Related: AVs on Uber’s platform see 30% higher utilization… (link). Interesting claim, although I’m not sure how Uber would know what utilization looks like on Waymo’s first party platform, since I can’t imagine Waymo is handing over that data.
Waymo’s California Growth May Be Slowing, But It’s Complicated (link) via Matthew Raifman, PhD, MPP.
Lyft’s Hybrid Approach to Autonomy with CEO David Risher (link). Our latest podcast where we also discussed Lyft’s partnership strategy with companies like Waymo, and why David believes Lyft can play a major role in the AV future without developing its own self-driving technology, among other things.
AVs/Humans behaving badly
‘Waymo gotta add homeless people to their training data in SF. I’ve been stuck on this left turn for 5 mins cause this brother is blocking it’ (link).
Get-a-Waymo: How a burglar used a robotaxi to flee the scene in a first-of-its kind S.F. case (link, no paywall).
‘Self-driving cars are fun because you never see competing SaaS products having a literal standoff in the street’ (link).
‘That’s going to be a while’ (link). Guess it’s time to call a Lyft.
‘A 60mph+ reckless wrong-way driver on a 40mph road can easily lead to severe collisions. Two different Waymos (and an attentive human ahead!) avoided tragedy in Phoenix the other week by taking evasive action’ (link).
AV/Human behaving “goodly” :)
‘Cutting across three lanes to make a last-second turn? The Waabi Driver saw it coming’ (link). As AVs become more common, it will be interesting to see whether some human drivers start exploiting their predictability, taking actions they might not attempt around another human driver.
‘You can’t even walk the sidewalk in LA’ (link).
Shout-outs
Big thanks to TDD readers at TaskUs, Mad Hatter Mobility, Lyft, Plus.ai and to David 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
Sr. Electrical Engineer, Self-Driving & AI Hardware at Tesla (link) via Mitchell Johnston.
Demand Operations Manager - London at Waymo (link) via Leticia Cavalcante.
Senior Embedded Middleware & Automation Engineer at Zoox (link) via Rajeev Verma.
Legal Counsel (Commercial) at Wayve (link) via Rohan Kazi.
Director, Systems Engineering at Nuro (link) via Garima Sangwan.
Job Moves
Brett Suma: Loadsmith Ventures -> Bot Auto (link).
Allison Khoe: ŌURA -> Waymo (link).
Lynda Talgo: Waymo (link).
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Until next week :)
-Harry