This week’s edition is brought to you by MN8 Energy – powering the next generation of fleet and infrastructure electrification.
Waymo in the News
Alphabet’s Waymo Has Built a Custom Chip for Its Robotaxis (link, no paywall).
Its fleet has largely relied on Jaguar vehicles retrofitted with autonomous-driving technology and chips from others. But it recently launched a robotaxi with Zeekr, an arm of China-based automaker Geely Automobile Holdings, that is now being equipped with the new custom chip.
Related: A look under our trunk: what’s in our compute (link).
Waymo’s cheaper, next-gen robotaxi [Ojai] is now open to all riders in these three cities (link).
Waymo has opened its next-generation robotaxi to all riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. For now, customers in these markets may be matched with the new robotaxi, called the Ojai (pronounced oh-hi) when they hail a ride. Once Waymo has enough Ojais in its fleet, riders will be able to choose between the new vehicle and the older Jaguar I-Pace robotaxi.
Waymo: Big news for the Golden State — we have received the CPUC’s approval to expand our autonomous ride-hailing service across the SF Bay Area and LA, and bring our service to Sacramento and San Diego (link).
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Uber Partnerships and Announcements
Uber, Zipline Partner With Goal of Hitting 1 Million Drone Deliveries a Day (link, no paywall). Good news for Uber’s autonomous delivery ambitions after its Serve partnership unraveled last week. Zipline is one of the more impressive companies in the space, so I’m excited to see what they can do at Uber scale.
Under the partnership, Uber Eats will start deliveries with Zipline’s drone network in Dallas and Houston by the end of the year. The companies plan to expand the offering across the U.S. as Zipline grows its footprint, targeting one million Uber Eats deliveries via drone a day by the end of 2029. Uber is also investing an undisclosed amount in Zipline, the companies said.
Pony.ai: Autonomous rides are now live on Uber in Zagreb. For the first time in Europe, riders can book an AV through Uber, bringing together Pony.ai’s Gen-7 Robotaxi technology, Verne’s local operations and Uber’s platform (link). Of course they’re not actually driverless, but at least they show the safety driver at the end. #TDDnotapproved
Uber: Uber Eats is bringing robot delivery to the EU! Next week, Finland will become the first EU market where Eaters can get their orders delivered by autonomous robots, starting in central Helsinki through our partnership with Coco Robotics (link).
Baidu’s Apollo Go Goes Live on Uber in Dubai, Offering a New Way for Users to Hail Fully Driverless Rides (link). Now this is driverless. #TDDapproved
Wayve: Early access rides on Uber are now underway in London, giving a select few the chance to experience a trip with the Wayve AI Driver ahead of public launch (link). Not driverless but still cool :)
Other Stuff
Tesla, Uber, and Waymo all get the OK to operate thousands of robotaxis in Nevada (link).
Las Vegas specifically — is shaping up to be a major robotaxi battleground, with Tesla, Uber (via its autonomous vehicle partners Motional and Zoox), and Waymo all competing for the same riders.
Rivian spinout Also raises another $150M (link). I haven’t been following Also closely, but apparently they’ve got some big AV ambitions. Definitely a company to watch.
The new capital will be used to “accelerate the development” of the company’s autonomous driving technology and the “simultaneous progression of multiple autonomous form factors,” according to the company. These future vehicles will use the same electric architecture developed for its consumer electric pedal-assist bike and commercial electric delivery quad.
‘I drove Tesla FSD, Rivian Autonomy+ ‘hands-free’ driving systems. Here’s how they compare’ (link). This is a fair assessment of Rivian’s UHF capabilities. Rivian makes a great car, but its driver-assistance system still feels about 5–7 years behind Tesla FSD Supervised today. But that doesn’t mean it will take Rivian another 5–7 years to close the gap. Rivian is working with a more robust sensor stack, cheaper and more powerful compute, and the benefit of years of industry-wide advances in AI and autonomy. The bigger question is how quickly Rivian can turn those advantages into a system that actually matches Tesla on the road.
“I hope that we can even exceed the Tesla system because of our investments in a more robust sensor stack,” Rivian’s Philbin said. “We’re actually a big believer in multimodal imaging, so cameras and radars, and later on, early next year, lidar as well on the R2.”
‘Waymo is now open to everyone in Space City [Houston]. Download the Waymo app and ride today!’ (link).
Einride to deploy 500 Tesla Semis in biggest electric truck order yet (link).
Einride is putting 500 Tesla Semis on US roads. That will take the Swedish freight company from roughly 250 deployed electric trucks to about 750. First deliveries start next month, with the rest arriving in phases over 24 months. Five states are in scope: California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, and Georgia. Amazon is the named customer, and every truck gets managed through Saga, Einride’s software platform for routing and charging windows.
Related: Einride’s Autonomous Freight Strategy with CTO Henrik Green (link).
Amazon to expand drone service to nearly 500 cities after targeting 1 million deliveries this year (link).
‘Waymo CPUC Data Update Q2’2026 - Reaching 315K weekly trips in June in CA’ (link). Waymo’s California trip count ticked down in May and June, although the freeway pause may have played a role. But I’m not sure Waymo is actually focused on gaining market share in its mature California markets. The bigger priority seems to be geographic expansion, and launching and testing in a growing number of new cities. They’ve already shown they can quickly gain meaningful share in a market like San Francisco. At this point, proving they can replicate that across the country may be more valuable than squeezing out a few more points of market share in SF.
Related: ‘A few hidden gems in the CA CPUC data’ (link).1
Bedrock Robotics deploys fully autonomous excavators on jobsites (link).
Serve Robotics partners with Grubhub after Uber exit (link, no paywall).
The Waymo Wipeout of Uber Shares Has Gone Too Far (link, no paywall).
Related: ‘$UBER is starting to remind me a little of $GOOGL in 2024’ (link).
Self-driving trucks are officially testing on California highways (link).
Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two companies developing self-driving trucks, have received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test their autonomous vehicle technology on public roads. And Kodiak has already started.
Related: Scaling Driverless Trucking with Kodiak AI CEO Don Burnette (link).
Democrats Are Failing the Waymo Test (link, no paywall).
‘Ride in Robotaxi through 8/23 for a shot to attend our Cybercab launch event’ (link).
‘Waymo is now worth nearly as much as Uber.’ (link).
What else we’re reading/listening to
Uber Wants It Both Ways With Autonomous Vehicles (link). Our latest guest piece from University of San Francisco Professor William (Billy) Riggs argues that Uber’s newfound defense of drivers and concerns over AV displacement are difficult to square with its own aggressive push into autonomy, and questions whether Uber is really protecting drivers or simply protecting its business.
Scaling Driverless Trucking with Kodiak AI CEO Don Burnette (link). My latest podcast where I sit down with Kodiak AI founder and CEO to discuss how autonomous trucking has moved from R&D into real-world commercialization, how Kodiak is taking a vehicle-agnostic approach to physical AI, and what it will take to scale fully driverless long-haul trucking, among other things.
Autonomy Insiders by Daniel Abreu Marques: How WeRide Built a Global Robotaxi Business in 9 Years | Tony Han, CEO WeRide (link).
AVs/Humans behaving badly
‘An Amazon customer in Texas was not enthused when her first drone-delivered order was dropped into her swimming pool’ (link).
‘Man successfully raids Coco delivery robot’ (link).
‘Tesla Robotaxi Rams through several Bollards and keeps going’ (link).
‘BREAKING: Official update from Waymo on the incident..’ (link). Nice airbags!
A Waymo vehicle in autonomous mode with two trained specialists in the car entered an intersection on a green light and collided with a coach bus that ran a red light.
AV/Human behaving “goodly” :)
‘New York Ave is not the place, Coco’ (link). But ‘She Made It’ (link).
‘Yesterday, on Union Street in SF, I noticed a Waymo with its built-in LED display showing, “Help close door”... I decided to be a good Samaritan and help out’ (link).
Shout-outs
Big thanks to TDD readers at Cabify 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
Director, Global Operations Control at Waymo (link) via Greg A.
Senior / Staff Connectivity Integration Lead at Zoox (link) via Radhakrishnan Suryanarayanan.
Full Stack Software Engineer, Evaluation Tools at Wayve (link) via John M. Wyrwas.
Job Moves
Michał Śniady: Goldman Sachs -> Waymo (link).
Antoine Delorme: Daimler Truck North America -> Waabi (link).
Charles Paul: Sentry -> Waymo (link).
Brent Kent: Lyft -> Wayve (link).
Jack Mitchell: Lucid Motors -> Waymo (link).
Until next week :)
-Harry
And thank you for the chart!