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The robotaxi law that could ban Tesla

2026-07-09T15:21:56-04:00

For more than a decade, one question has loomed over the race to build autonomous vehicles: Are cameras alone enough to safely replace human drivers, or do truly driverless cars need additional, overlapping sensors like lidar and radar to navigate the world reliably? Tesla has bet billions of dollars that artificial intelligence and cameras are sufficient. Nearly every other major autonomous vehicle developer has gone the opposite direction.

Until now, that argument has largely been left to executives and engineers. New Jersey lawmakers are trying to settle it in state law.

A bill expected to come up for a vote later this year would requir …

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Waymo introduces $30-a-month premium tier for riders who want faster pickups

2026-06-10T16:16:23-04:00

Uber One, meet Waymo Premier.

The robotaxi operator announced a new $29.99-a-month premium tier for riders who want a more elevated and exclusive autonomous experience. The invite-only membership service is aimed at Waymo customers who use the service most frequently, offering them a number of perks, including priority pickups, 10 percent cash back on every trip, early robotaxi access in new cities, and up to five free cancellations a month.

Waymo Premier will be initially offered to select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, the company said. The program will scale to new cities as Waymo continues to expand; the company h …

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Waymo built a virtual driver to study how humans react to surprises on the road

2026-06-09T18:21:59-04:00

Waymo has a lot of experience building virtual systems to help its autonomous vehicles better understand the real world. It built realistic 3D worlds to better anticipate natural disasters and unpredictable edge cases. It created a virtual representation of a hyperattentive driver to test against its own autonomous vehicles in a series of simulated scenarios to see which is better at crash avoidance.

Now, in a new research paper published today in Nature Communications, Waymo describes a new computer-based cognitive model that explains how human drivers make split-second decisions to avoid crashes. The company thinks the new model will serv …

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People are leaving a lot of weird stuff in their robotaxis

2026-06-01T16:14:21-04:00

A unicorn Beanie Baby. A 15-pound green bowling ball. A pair of dentures.

These are just some of the items left behind in robotaxis in the past year, according to Uber's annual Lost and Found Index. For the first time, the company is expanding its annual of accounting of things forgotten in Uber vehicles to include self-driving cars because, for the first time, Uber has enough self-driving cars on its platform to matter.

Uber doesn't deploy its own robotaxis, but in the last few years it's become a clearinghouse for driverless car companies that want access to Uber's millions of customers. Here in the US, that includes Waymo (in Austin a …

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Waymo to begin passenger rides in its new Ojai robotaxi

2026-05-28T11:31:32-04:00

After several months of testing, Waymo is finally ready to invite non-employee passengers into its newest vehicle, the Zeekr RT minivan, which has been rebranded as Ojai. Waymo says it will begin offering "select riders" access in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, before "gradually" expanding to more riders and cities. Trips will be free to start out, as Waymo collects data about the passenger experience in the new vehicle. Paid rides will follow.

Waymo's current fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles runs on the company's fifth generation technology, first rolled out in March 2020. But that vehicle has reached the end of its shelf life, a …

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Waymo suspends freeway driving amid safety concerns

2026-05-22T15:03:37-04:00

On Thursday, Waymo customers opened up the app and noticed something unusual: no more freeway service. Trips that would normally take a few minutes on the freeway were suddenly projected to last much longer via local roads.

The company later confirmed that it had suspended freeway driving across all of its US markets over concerns about construction zones. It had also paused service in Atlanta and San Antonio over lingering issues regarding flooded roads. The news comes after several of the company's robotaxis were spotted driving through flooded roads at elevated speeds in Texas, forcing Waymo to issue a software recall for its entire fle …

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Waymo recalls robotaxis for driving on flooded roads

2026-05-12T09:33:26-04:00

A Waymo drives across Congress Avenue on 8th Street in front of the Capitol Building as rain arrives in the Austin area on Friday, Jan. 23, 2025 ahead of anticipated drops in temperature and freezing rain over the weekend. (Sara Diggins/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images) | Image: Getty

Waymo is recalling its autonomous driving software that allowed its vehicles to drive on flooded roads. The recall affects 3,791 vehicles that operate using Waymo's fifth and sixth generation systems.

In documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Alphabet-owned company said that an unoccupied Waymo robotaxi "encountered an untraversable flooded section of a roadway that has a 40 mph speed limit." Despite detecting the flooded road, the vehicle "proceeded at reduced speed." Waymo said it was currently working on a remedy. In the interim, the company has updated its vehicles to "increase weather-related cons …

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Most people still don’t want anything to do with robotaxis

2026-04-20T16:05:13-04:00

I've been reporting on self-driving cars for over a decade, and I've seen the technology go through many ups and downs, highs and lows. But one thing has remained remarkably the same over the years: the public just ain't buying it.

Poll after poll has revealed a deep and abiding skepticism toward autonomous vehicles. People don't trust the technology, don't want to ride in cars without human drivers - even when the evidence suggests the vehicle could be much safer than a human driver. Sure, robotaxis are operating in about a dozen cities now, and companies like Waymo don't seem to have any problems finding customers. But when you expand th …

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Waymo is offering to help cities fix their potholes

2026-04-08T17:33:41-04:00

In recent months, some cities have sought a new recruit in their forever war against potholes: Waymo.

Municipal officials in multiple cities where Waymo operates have reached out to the robotaxi operator for help in locating potholes on their streets, assuming that Waymo kept such data. Fortunately for them, Waymo does, and it has recently decided to launch a pilot program, along with Google's Waze, to share its pothole data with city officials.

The mission is to make city streets safer to drive, which is desirable for both human and robot drivers. And it could help Waymo's broader effort to build positive relationships with cities, espec …

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Robotaxi companies won’t say how often remote operators intervene

2026-04-06T15:55:18-04:00

Autonomous vehicle companies are refusing to disclose key details about their use of remote assistance teams, including how often these workers are forced to intervene to help their self-driving cars.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) had asked robotaxi companies to disclose the information as part of an investigation by his office into the use of remote assistance operators (RAO). The senator's office sent letters to seven robotaxi companies - Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Amazon's Zoox - seeking information about the use of remote workers to monitor the driverless vehicles and occasionally intervene when the vehicles need h …

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