Waymo Expands Service to Las Vegas, San Diego, and Detroit

Baidu hits 250,000 weekly rides, Why unions are becoming a problem for self-driving cars, and ‘I tried a Tesla FSD Dupe’

Top Stories of the Week

Waymo’s robotaxi expansion accelerates with 3 new cities (link). The company plans to launch service in Detroit, Las Vegas, and San Diego, rolling out a mix of self-driving Jaguar I-Pace and Zeekr RT vehicles for testing this week, with public rides expected next year. No partners were mentioned in the official announcements.

My guess is that these three markets are part of a broader Zeekr rollout rather than the official debut. Waymo hasn’t said where the new model will launch first, but its fleet-scaling language suggests the Zeekrs are being prepped for multiple markets at once — likely starting in existing hubs like San Francisco or Los Angeles before expanding outward.

Related: Here’s a neat map of where Waymo is now driving (h/t Ethan McKanna).

Other Stuff

China’s Baidu says weekly robotaxi rides hit 250,000 — same as Alphabet’s Waymo this spring (link). Although not everyone believes the numbers coming out of China, I’ve found them to be generally reliable. The ‘fake numbers out of China’ narrative may have been true in the past but I think that’s also a crutch that some people use to ignore the progress being made there. I haven’t personally made a trip to China yet but the feedback has been positive from those who have.

Autonomous Vehicles Are on the Rise, Bluedot Keeps Them Charged for Avride (link).

Uber says it’s doing better in markets where it has autonomous vehicles (link).

‘I tried a Tesla FSD dupe (Wayve). It’s challenging how I think about the technology’ (link).

Pony.ai becomes first to win citywide robotaxi permit in China’s Silicon Valley (link).

As goes Waymo so does Cybercab (link).

How Much Does It Matter How Much Your Robotaxi Costs To Build? (link, no paywall).

Why unions are becoming a problem for self-driving cars (link).

Baidu and public transport operator PostBus to launch robotaxis in Switzerland (link).

What else we’re reading/listening to

All-In podcast featuring Elon Musk: 3 Years of X, OpenAI Lawsuit, Bill Gates, Grokipedia & The Future of Everything (link). You can jump to the 01:00:16 mark where Elon talks about the robotaxi for about 10 minutes. He makes a few ambitious statements — saying Cybercab production will start in Q2 2026 and that they plan to remove the safety monitor before the end of the year, sometime in December. He also doubles down on not putting a steering wheel in the Cybercab.

What It Would Take for Waymo to Launch in New York City (link). My latest episode with Dawood Mian — longtime NYC fleet owner and founder of AutoMarketplace — breaks down how New York’s TLC ecosystem really works, from its unique regulatory and insurance structure to the economics of operating a rideshare fleet there. We get into the origins of lockouts, how the market has evolved, and why NYC’s dense, tightly managed environment makes it one of the hardest places for a robotaxi operator like Waymo to launch.

Cool Rides

‘My first Zoox ride was perfect. I am totally infected and convinced that this concept will be overwhelmingly accepted by the people especially in big cities’ (link).

‘I climbed into a driverless Waymo in downtown Austin and realized pretty quickly that our “driver” wasn’t going to respond to questions about Jesus’ (link).

‘I got to ride on the first Autonomous public transit bus on US soil ever’ (link).

‘Taking my first Waymo ride headed from the Phoenix airport…Kind of creepy, but frankly feels safer then riding with a stranger - and so far, my Waymo has been a conscientious driver’ (link).

AVs/Humans behaving badly

‘This Waymo is never going to get out onto this rush hour freeway on-ramp. I was behind it and had to drive around it’ (link).

Waymo blocking traffic & rider support in action (link).

Fans vandalize Waymo after Dodgers game (link). Waymo needs a better strategy for big events like this — there’s real rider demand, but the cars are highly visible and too easy a target.

Neat Jobs

2026 Summer Intern, MBA, Strategy & Operations, Customer Experience at Waymo (link) via Rachel Medin.

Technical Program Manager, Cabin Systems at Tesla (link) via Rushikesh Mane.

System Safety Engineer at Waymo (link) via Afsheen Vaid.

Senior ML Accelerator Modeling Engineer at Waymo (link) via Sabareesh R.

AV/Mobility Events

MobilitySF Dec 9th event (San Francisco). The event will be held at Rivian’s San Francisco showroom and will include casual networking, an AV panel (Will Autonomous Vehicles “Fix” Your City?) with two city-planning experts, and food and drinks (link).

Until next week.

-Harry

PS - No podcast next week since I’m on family vacation in Maui but lots of good episodes to catch up on in our archive.