Waymo Now Has 2,000 Vehicles in Their US Fleet
Zoox launches their own app, Uber CEO Thinks Elon Is Wrong About Lidar, and Waymo starts testing in NYC
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This week’s edition is brought to you by Terawatt – purpose-built charging for autonomous vehicle fleets.
Top Stories of the Week
Waymo says its SF fleet has tripled in size since last public disclosure (link). This confirms something many San Franciscans have suspected for months. More interestingly, Waymo also disclosed that they now have 2,000 commercial vehicles in the U.S. Up from the 1,500 total number they disclosed in May 1.
Waymo granted the first permit to begin testing autonomous vehicles in New York City (link). The company will be allowed to test their vehicles in the city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Waymo said they are now testing 8 vehicles in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, and will do so through September. In the words of New York Mayor, Eric Adams:
As mayor of the most innovative city on the globe, I'm excited to bring Waymo to the streets of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, but the safety of New Yorkers must come first.
Great timing for this news too since we’re hosting our first annual Urban Autonomy Summit, presented by Nexar, on October 8th in NYC at Newlab in Brooklyn. Apply to attend here, space is limited.
All eyes are on NYC right now since it is the biggest ridehail market in the world and as I wrote before:
As of April 2025, there were 658,465 ridehail trips per day, and the average fare was $33.42 ($22 million of revenue per day). NYC is also more dense than San Francisco, where Waymo has a 20.5% market share, so if we assume that Waymo can eventually capture just 20% of the NYC market, that would translate to 921,851 trips per week1 (remember they’re at 250,000 trips per week in total across all five current markets so NYC alone could be 4x their existing footprint). And since we now know from Obi data that Waymo charges a 30% premium to ridehail, NYC could generate $40 million2 in weekly revenue for Waymo.
NYC is a heavily regulated market though so it will be interesting to see what kind of push back they will face now that their vehicles are on the road and AVs become ‘real’ for New Yorkers. I expect labor to be one of the biggest challenges since every ridehail driver in NYC is commercially licensed and insured, meaning most are full time drivers. So their livelihood depends on this job much more so than every other city in the US.
Cool Rides
‘I’ve a soft spot for 99 octane myself, but…this ride was convenient, fun - and unexpectedly relaxing’ (link).
‘A haboob swept through Phoenix yesterday after monsoon storms, bringing heavy winds, rain, and dust that knocked down power lines and trees. Through it all, Waymo safely got people where they needed to go’ (link).
AVs/Humans behaving badly
Poor Waymo with the hesitation, you can see they wanted to step on it (link).
‘Minor accident with Culver City Sanitation truck’ (link).
‘Found paraphernalia in a Waymo today’ (link).
Designing Charging Hubs for Autonomous Fleets
We are excited to partner with Terawatt, one of the leading providers of charging infrastructure. To learn more about Terawatt's network of AV charging hubs and track record of 99%+ uptime, reach out to Logan Szidik at lszidik@terawattinfrastructure.com
Other Stuff
‘Set your pickup time, we’ll handle the rest. 🤝 Now you can plan a ride with Waymo ahead of time, on your terms’ (link). This is a great feature for riders since it partly solves the problem of high ETAs and ‘no cars available’. But, it does come at a cost. Scheduled rides have historically cost more because you have to position the vehicle ahead of time and you can’t be late or even worse, miss the pick up time. So your estimates need to be on the conservative side and leave a 10-15 minute buffer or more. Especially in high density/traffic cities like SF and parts of LA. As Waymo starts to scale, this feature will work better and I could see them giving priority to power users. But for now, it’s going to cost the rider more, or Waymo more, if they decide to eat the cost.
Cash cab: Uber seeks winning model for robotaxis (link).
Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, does not think Elon’s camera only approach will work (link):
Autonomous vehicles have to have super human levels of safety…. They have to be multiple times better than humans…. I think, in the near term, it’s going to be very difficult — and Elon would tell me I’m wrong […] to build a camera-only product that has superhuman levels of safety
Musk Says Waymos ‘Can’t Drive on Highways’ as LiDAR/Radars ‘Reduce Safety’ (link). Waymos are already driving on freeways, just not with paying passengers so that’s the first thing that Elon is wrong about here. I’m also skeptical of his argument that Waymo and others won’t be able to safely fuse lidar/radar/camera data since Waymo has already done over 100 million miles using this approach. But usually when you’re the only one doing something, you’re either very right, or very wrong. Time will tell.
Related: Tesla’s lawyers used the lack of LiDAR to show system limits and reduce liability (link).
WeRide Unveils WePilot AiDrive, A One-Stage End-to-End ADAS Targeted for Mass Production in 2025 (h/t Mac). The WePilot AiDrive is a new one-stage, end-to-end ADAS solution they built with Bosch. Unlike the traditional setup where sensing and decision-making happen in separate steps, WePilot AiDrive combines both in a single architecture. That means vehicles can “see and act” at the same time, enabling faster responses, shorter routes, and better fault tolerance, almost like driving with the instincts of a skilled human driver. The system has already passed core function validation and is on track for mass production and vehicle deployment later in 2025.
How Tesla and Waymo's radically different robotaxi approaches will shape the industry (link).
Zoox Has Launched Its App, With Service Coming to Las Vegas and San Francisco (link). The app currently allows users to sign up for a waitlist for their impending launches in Las Vegas and SF. Zoox’s app looks great and while it makes sense for them to control the initial experience, I think eventually they’ll need to partner with Uber and Lyft to generate demand as they start to scale. I don't see customers downloading multiple ridehail apps after Uber, Lyft, Waymo and Tesla.
‘Why did they call it Waymo and not Google drive’ (link). Took me a minute to get this one..
Awkward Tesla Robotaxi incident proves they are putting optics over safety (link).
Kodiak Appoints Surajit Datta as Chief Financial Officer (link).
New Data Shows AVs Are Cutting Into Rideshare Driver Pay (link).
What else we're reading/listening to
x Terawatt Webinar 7/1/25 (link). Insightful episode with Terawatt CEO Neha Palmer, who breaks down what it takes to build charging infrastructure for AV and EV fleets — from the key components to the setup process for a full charging hub. also dives into what AV fleets need from these hubs, and they chat about how Terawatt helps fleets expand into new markets by prepping those markets for the arrival of their vehicles. One point that stood out though is that it takes nearly two years to go from research to the complete setup of these charging hubs, when we factor in the financial burden involved, it makes a lot of sense why AV/EV fleets do not need to handle that responsibility on their own. Stay tuned for my interview with Neha Palmer on the TDD podcast which will be publishing soon.Junko’s Tech Probe by
: L4: The Self-Driving Dream that Never Dies (link).Breaking Down the Cost of a Waymo Zeekr With Chris Paxton (link). My latest podcast episode is with
, author of , and a roboticist who's worked all across the industry (Zoox, Nvidia, Meta etc). We discussed Waymo’s new Zeekr robotaxis, their cost, manufacturing, technical details and how they compare to the current fleet of Jaguar I-PACEs. We also talked about Tesla’s camera only approach and how it compares to the Lidar system used by Waymo and many other AV players among many other things.Neat Jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Inertial Navigation at Waymo (link) via Pepe Melendez.
Manager, Product Public Policy at Uber (link) via Harry Hartfield.
Regional Validation Program Manager at Waymo (link) via Sarah Basham.
Until next week.
- Harry
PS - For fun, reply to this e-mail and let me know what you’re up to for Labor Day weekend (I promise to read every reply). I’m headed to a Dodgers game, having a pool party, hanging with my kids, and will also be wondering why their school gave them Friday off in addition to Monday 😂
In Aug. of 2025, an Uber spokesperson told Business Insider that the company has 'dozens of vehicles' in the Atlanta market. We made an assumption of 36 vehicles.
Waymo also reported that their current fleet size is 2,000 vehicles as of Aug. 2025, with 400 in Phoenix, 800 in SF, and 500 in Atlanta. We assumed Austin still has 100 vehicles so that leaves 164 vehicles unaccounted for.