Autonomous Cars

The two people were shot Sunday night while sitting in a Waymo robotaxi near Santa Monica’s 3rd Street promenade, KCAL News reports. We still don’t have any details about the condition or identities of the victims, and police are still actively searching for a suspect. The shooting comes a few weeks after five Waymo vehicles were vandalized and destroyed during anti-ICE protests in downtown Los Angeles.

By most accounts, the company’s robotaxi launch in Austin yesterday went off without a hitch. Most of the Tesla fans and influencers who received invites to test it out said the experience was “smooth” and “natural.” But you knew something was going to happen, and that something turned out to be a robotaxi briefly driving in the opposite lane of traffic. Not a good look.

VW subsidiary Moia announced today the series production version of the fully autonomous ID Buzz minivans that will comprise the company’s robotaxi fleet in Los Angeles in 2026. If you’ve ever ridden in a Waymo, you’ll recognize a few familiar designs, like “start/stop” buttons, an external keypad for entry, and plenty of cameras inside and out the vehicle. I also noticed a bunch of smart choices, like luggage carriers in place of a front passenger seat and linoleum flooring for the passenger who inevitably spills their full Starbucks drink (or vomits, I guess).

Just food for thought ahead of the company’s robotaxi launch later this month.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that the launch would be July 12th. But Tesla never confirmed it, and now Musk is saying the long-awaited robotaxi service will “tentatively” kick off in Austin, Texas, on June 22nd. (An X user spotted one of the first driverless Teslas in the city earlier this week.) Musk also claimed that a Tesla vehicle will drive itself from the factory to a customer’s home for the first time on June 28th.

A Tesla Model Y with no one behind the steering wheel was spotted driving through Austin recently, according to a video posted to X and noticed by InsideEVs. The video was also reposted by Tesla’s head of autonomy, Ashok Elluswamy, who wrote “Slowly slowly at first, then …” seemingly confirming its authenticity. The Model Y also has “Robotaxi” written in Tesla’s notoriously difficult-to-read Cybertruck font on the passenger door. Bloomberg previously reported that the company’s robotaxi service was set to launch this week on June 12th, though the automaker has yet to formally confirm the date.

Uber and one of the ridehail company’s many robotaxi partners, Wayve, announced today that they will begin testing Level 4 autonomous vehicles in London on public roads as soon as 2026. The timing coincides with the UK Secretary of State for Transport’s announcement of “an accelerated framework for self-driving commercial pilots, following the Automated Vehicles Act becoming law last month. Trials have been underway for a while, but always with a safety driver in the front seat. Now the companies can remove the driver from the vehicle, but in doing so they will accept full liability if the vehicle crashes.

At least five of Alphabet’s autonomous cars have been set on fire, according to the New York Times, as protesters rage against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. “We will not be serving any rides in the protest area until it is deemed safe,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

The Alphabet-owned company is planning to set its vehicles loose in Houston, Orlando, and San Antonio as part of its 2025 “road trip.” The vehicles will be manually driven, and the testing operations are not necessarily a precursor to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service — nor is Waymo precluded from launching a service, either. The company sees it as an opportunity to see how well its self-driving system adapts to new locales with varying weather conditions and regional driving habits. Waymo previously said it was testing its vehicles in Las Vegas, Miami, and Japan.

The Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle developer announced that it would soon start mapping and gathering data in Atlanta, where it hopes to eventually launch a robotaxi service. That means that Zoox will be testing in a total of seven cities, including Las Vegas, San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, LA, and Austin. The company said it would start accepting public riders in Las Vegas and SF later this year. The announcement came a day after Uber said it was preparing to launch its next partnership with Waymo in Atlanta.

ATL will be the second city, after Austin, where Waymo’s driverless cars will be available exclusively on the Uber app. Ahead of the public launch this summer, Uber is opening up access to a group of riders selected from the company’s interest list for early test rides. Those riders will get $10 in Uber cash to use on their Waymo ride. And in exchange they’ll be asked to share feedback on the ride, as well as rate the experience after drop-offs. After a few week, Waymo’s driverless vehicles will be available to anyone with an Uber account who’s traveling within the 65-square mile service area that includes Downtown, Buckhead, and Capitol View.

Waymo’s robotaxis are available exclusively on the Uber app in the Texas capital, and today the ridehailing company provided some color on how that partnership is going since its launch in early March. Waymo’s approximately 100 vehicles in Austin are “busier than over 99% of all drivers in Austin in terms of completed trips per day,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in prepared remarks during the company’s Q1 earnings call. He added, “So far, this launch has exceeded our expectations.”

Uber and China’s WeRide are currently operating a small fleet of autonomous cars in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, and plan on launching soon in Dubai. Now they expect to deploy robotaxi service to 15 additional cities, some of which will be in Europe, over the next five years.

Momenta will deploy its autonomous vehicles on Uber’s ridehailing platform starting in 2026, initially with safety drivers on board. For availability, Uber is only saying they’ll be in “international markets outside of the US and China.”

Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle company has “reached a preliminary agreement” with the world’s largest automaker “to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies,” according to a just-published blogpost. Does that mean we’ll soon be getting driverless Rav4s? Too soon to say, but the agreement also includes Woven, which is Toyota’s autonomous subsidiary. And the announcement specifically mention’s Toyota’s expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)” — which we know is on the mind of Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles proposed updating its autonomous vehicle regulations to include testing heavy-duty trucks. California currently allows light-duty autonomous vehicles, but not ones weighing over 10,001 pounds. Labor groups have tried passing legislation requiring human safety operators in autonomous trucks, but California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed the bill twice.