Robotaxi Report #8: "look ma, no hands" (or steering wheel... or pedals)

Hey, Jaan here.

On Monday, we launched our first eTruckwire.com newsletter and its daily articles page. Lots of great buzz around it!

Today, I’m announcing that our Robotaxi Report newsletter goes weekly. Yes, this newsletter.

A dedicated page for our daily robotaxi articles follows soon. As far as I can tell, these two are the only daily news publications dedicated to just either topic in the whole Western world.

Our core EV coverage continues all the same, and it all comes together in the EVwire.com feed.

And yes, with our regular newsletters included, you will see three full reports coming your way some weeks, two in all others. Even more if you happen to be an Insider.

Not into robotaxis but want to keep the EV side? Just click here and you'll stop receiving only the robotaxi part of EVwire (soon to include autonomous trucking too btw). Beware - unsubscribing at the bottom takes you out of all EVwire.

In today's Robotaxi newsletter, we'll dig into some larger and some recent news:

…and more. Let's dig right in, enjoy!

I shared the whole Cybercab event roundup to our Insiders right as it ended, but just realized I haven’t written out the key parts of it for most of our readers here.
Time to fix that, and I think it’s an important one whether you are interested in robotaxis or just EVs.

You see,

everyone is seeing the Cybercab just as an autonomy story.

I see it equally as the final-boss level of the EV story.
At least in terms of impact.

Think about it…

I mean, the simplest equation of:

best efficiency x highest utilization x largest fleet

...will already make it the most impactful EV out there.

Then add the potential lives saved (ok ok if you still don’t believe in FSD, bear with us), minerals unmined, comfort, and accessibility wins.

Without any hype, if Tesla pulls it off, I believe the Cybercab could be the most impactful EV ever created.

…and here they were, saying Tesla isn't in the EV business anymore.

Anyway,

The Cybercab fleet opened to public rides in Austin on September 4. We created a full roundup of it all here: (link).

126 Cybercabs are officially registered in the robotaxi fleet for Texas so far, hundreds more sit in the parking lots in other cities, and the (first) factory line is built for 125,000 Cybercabs per year.

Current service runs across the entire Austin geofence, in the robotaxi app you already had for the Model Y, and there were 1 million cumulative unsupervised Robotaxi miles behind the system before launch.

No steering wheel and no pedals. No glovebox either, and the hood does not open, so there is no frunk. Here’s a view under the hood from Kyle Conner at the event

There are ZERO rare earth metals in the motor (link), a first for a Tesla drive unit, and 18% smaller and 25% lighter than other top-performing EV drive units. Musk says: "This was extremely hard to achieve"

Here’s a quick layout I pulled from the Cybercab Emergency Response Guide, front drive unit shown:

Electrical brakes: Cybercab is fully brake-by-wire (link), with no brake fluid and no master cylinder, an actuator at each corner. It is steer-by-wire too, which in a car with no steering wheel is really the only option anyway.

Cybercab is built on the unboxed line, modules assembled in parallel, which Tesla says halves the size of the factory line. Tesla later shared a video showcasing some of that unboxed manufacturing line: (link).

It has injection-molded body panels with the colour going in during the molding, so there is no paint shop at all.

And yes, Tesla has three no-paint products going on now already: Semi gets powder-coated, Cybercab these injection-molded panels, and Cybertrucks… well, are “just” stainless steel.

Cybercab has 5 types of airbags:

Battery pack with dry cathode 4680 cells engineered for 500,000 miles of DC fast charging, vibrations and temperature swings.
Tesla also just reached a milestone last week: Tesla built its first Cybercab with cathode material made at Giga Texas!

Drag below 0.2 Cd on a 48-volt architecture, front-wheel drive.

Motorized seat belts that tighten when the car anticipates hard braking, and can buzz to get your attention.

Eight exterior cameras, plus an in-cabin radar that sizes the passenger and tunes the airbag accordingly (and an in-cabin camera checks for belongings left).
Oh, and the side cameras will also be pulled up when you’re about to exit the vehicle so you’d see there’s nothing incoming:

An interface built on Unreal Engine, on the largest screen of any Tesla, and all the entertainment you could think of on such a ride. Oh, and a Starlink dish is integrated into the Cybercab for it all. Elon Musk says: "Cybercab is basically a super comfortable lounge on wheels with a great TV and epic sound"

There is nobody in the front seat, because there is no front seat.

Both Cybercab seats slide forward and backward together, which is adjustable from the screen, but each reclines independently. I guess there’s no point in calling “shotgun” anymore, either. Just look at that legroom:

45 Cybercabs were registered in Texas at launch, so a real service on a rather small fleet, but as of today, Tesla has registered 126 Cybercabs in Texas (and 420 Model Ys) for robotaxi use. Tesla also made a very specific stop at a certain vehicle count, so naturally, I had to turn it into a joke on my X:

The butterfly doors open automatically when approaching, or by a manual button on the pillar. The doors open only partially when the cameras detect an obstruction. I’ve now seen both incredible accuracy and some actual bumps to someone from the doors in videos.

The lightbar colour-matches your app, so you can pick your car out of a row of identical ones. The ambient lights and screen light up the same way.

From the app, you also see the direction & distance to your robotaxi, and you can open the trunk, flash lights, unlock, or honk the horn.

There’s a virtual joystick on the touchscreen (link), hidden from user, that Tesla employees use to reposition a car with no controls. Most likely current uses are at Superchargers and charging depots. I assume this will be used by first responders, too, if remote control of the car isn’t possible for whatever reason (yes, Tesla can teleoperate at small speeds too).
Matthew Skrzypczak got in and found it still up on the screen by accident:

No under-13s allowed to ride yet, and no ISOFIX or LATCH anchors.

Tesla is already surveying riders on what to add: heated seats, a tray table, a wireless charger, and somewhere to put your phone that isn't the cup holder.

There are a lot more details than that. The full Cybercab roundup goes through all of it in detail. Oh, and…

You can now register interest in buying a fleet of them: (link)

The form went up the same day, fairly well hidden, asking for company details, a deployment region, and whether you want vehicles, mobility hubs, event collaboration or something else. I'm actually pretty sure I was the first to get my info in that form, about 15min before anyone on socials found this one.

Our article on this also happens to have gathered over 10,000 views from google’s organic search itself as we started ranking well if you search it with like “cybercab order form” or something.

NHTSA opened an audit query into the Cybercab on September 3, the launch day, and announced it the next day. It is numbered AQ26002 and covers about 1,000 vehicles.

Why? Well, in the US, a manufacturer self-certifies that its vehicle meets the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. NHTSA wants to see whether Tesla's framework decided that certain FMVSS requirements simply do not apply to a car with no human controls.

Administrator Jonathan Morrison wrote: "Our approach of balancing innovation with safety oversight will allow the United States to maintain its global leadership in AV innovation."

A week later, it became a Special Order. Dated September 10, it gives Tesla 21 requests to answer by September 30 (that’s today 👋 ), under oath, with an affidavit from a responsible Tesla officer.

Not answering can cost Tesla up to $27,874 a day, to a maximum of $139,356,994.

Selfishly, I’m hoping we’ll get unique insights into exact Tesla robotaxi service processes from those answers.

To be fair, I am also seeing some regulations proposed which will relax all these requirements or at least ease the process, so this, in either way, shouldn’t become too large of a problem for Tesla, at least not as large as some media outlets want you to believe.

Meanwhile, an Austin fire captain has concerns of his own. Capt. Matthew McElearney told NBC News the Cybercab's touchscreen "could fail a firefighter in an emergency situation in numerous ways."

I’d think there’s enough redundancy built into that… I’ve seen Tesla educate first responders through training + there are also the First Responder Interaction Plan, Emergency Response Guide (pdf), and Cybercab Rescue Sheet that Tesla has uploaded.

Zoox started charging for rides in Las Vegas on August 10. It was the first time anyone in the US paid to ride a purpose-built vehicle with no manual controls at all (later Cybercabs followed).

65 pods were running at launch, under a Nevada Transportation Authority cap of 100. That cap lapsed on September 25, so Zoox is cleared to go further now.

The same day last week, an empty Zoox collided with a Nissan Murano on southbound Las Vegas Boulevard near the south end of the Strip (link). The Nissan's driver went to hospital with a minor injury. Nevada Highway Patrol is investigating, and nobody has said yet who was at fault.

Zoox has also opened up its service for Las Vegas at the Harry Reid International Airport.

Interestingly, its drop-off and pickup are in both terminals near the baggage claim, whereas Uber and Lyft can only get to the terminal curb, about a 5- to 10-minute walk.

Zoox has also announced it started testing in San Diego and Houston. And just today, we wrote about Zoox sending its test fleet to Denver to test in winter conditions (link).

Let’s start with the freshest map of where Waymo operates today:

In September alone, Waymo opened the service in Denver, San Diego, Tampa and Las Vegas to the public. That takes Waymo to 15 US metros.

Waymo is inviting riders on a rolling basis off waitlists, which it says run to tens of thousands of people per market.

Most recently, Las Vegas opened to the public on September 14.

The service area is about 24 square miles, from Boulder Junction up the Strip to Sahara Avenue.

The airport isn't in it yet, and neither are freeways, even though Waymo got clearance on August 26 to drive fully autonomously at Harry Reid.

Waymo restarted paid rides in San Antonio on September 17, five months after cars got stuck in flash flooding and the service was paused. The airport is included, and the cars now stay out of high flood-risk areas.

Increasingly, the rides in the next-generation Ojai (the Zeekr-built van type) are being opened to all riders, for example in LA, Phoenix and SF.

The Ojai runs Gemini as an assistant for every rider, and Waymo also showed a custom 5nm chip that Waymo designed itself (link).

Waymo IONIQ 5s are coming too. Hyundai says the first IONIQ 5 Waymo robotaxis, built in Georgia, will be delivered in the fourth quarter, and that they'll help Waymo expand internationally as early as 2027.

However, we have already seen some of those 5s on the streets testing & also at the Waymo Magna facility in Mesa, Arizona, with 12 finished Hyundais (from ~2 months ago):

The Texas registrations show how fast Waymo fleet is growing: as of today, 1133 Waymos are registered, 350 of them the Ojais. That's out of around 4,000 Waymos in total.

Nashville: From Sept 10th, riders can now be matched with fully autonomous Waymo vehicles also through the Lyft app in Nashville.

In the Bay Area, Waymo will now pay you to ride transit. Riders get $2.85 in Waymo Cash when a Waymo ride and a transit trip paid with the same Visa card happen within two hours of each other, on any of the region's 27 transit agencies.

I wonder what the real incentive for Waymo to do this here is? I get the benefits of inserting your robotaxi options into the broader mobility system of a city, but to offer a cash reward like this… some other win seems to be at play, too.

Waymo said it is also leasing 40 parking spaces for its cars at Caltrain stations.

Looks like embedding itself into transit systems across cities is actually a bigger plan in Waymo’s roadmap.

Waymo's new safety data from last week shows an 82% reduction in injury crashes compared to human drivers (link), over 271.3 million rider-only miles through June 2026.

That 82% counts any crash where an injury was reported. Count only crashes with a serious injury or a death and it's 95% fewer.

The human benchmark comes from police-reported crashes in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, adjusted to the roads Waymo actually drives.

🇯🇵 Tokyo is set for 2027. Waymo says it intends to serve its first fully autonomous public trips there next year, with taxi operator Nihon Kotsu running operations and rides hailed through the GO app. Waymo has been running cars there with a driver for a while now.

🇸🇬 Singapore follows in 2028, with Waymo partnering with the city-state's Ministry of Transport and Land Transport Authority to bring its autonomous, all-electric ride-hailing service there.

🇩🇪 Munich, Germany plans were officially announced by Waymo, with a target of a late-2027 public service launch.

Berlin could come in 2027 too, according to some German media reports.

Uber-booked robotaxi rides went live in Zagreb on August 19, operated by Verne, on Pony.ai's stack with ArcFox T5 Alpha electric cars.

On September 10, Verne and Pony.ai went further. They have started carrying invited passengers in fully driverless robotaxis on public roads in Zagreb, a European first. (link)

These are still test rides, on a 22 km route linking Verne's HQ and a business district with Franjo Tuđman Airport. Remote operators monitor the cars but don't drive them.

Five days earlier, Uber and Pony.ai widened the deal to more than 2,000 robotaxis across five European cities (link). Zagreb is the only one named so far.

I’ve also seen that Uber has an investment earmarked for Verne after ‘certain milestones are met’, but so far it has only been written as “Uber intends to invest in Verne”.

I have a feeling that is about to be announced very soon, given the visit to the Rimac campus that Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made earlier this week. Dara shared this visit on his own socials, including this pic from the back seat of a driverless Pony AI robotaxi together with Marko Pejković, the CEO of Verne:

But I found it also quite meaningful to show it from Mate Rimac’s side (Mate is the CEO of Bugatti now, in case you missed it… and Rimac is behind Verne, in case you missed it):

This bottom-left image and the one with the screen shown are of the two-seater Verne robotaxi - which we know they’ve made at least 60 prototypes of.

Interestingly, this message (if nothing was lost in this translation), would mean that Verne would expand the Uber cooperation outside Croatia with the “final” Verne car.

Does that mean it’d be expanding out of Croatia without the current PonyAI ones? Uber does have that 2k robotaxi deal for Europe with PonyAI where Verne would fit in like a glove…

Lots to watch out for. I’ll be keeping close tabs on this one.

Wayve and Uber started carrying members of the public in London on September 3, with the Ford Mustang Mach-E electric cars. That makes it the UK's first autonomous ride-hail.

Wayve says it had over 140k Londoners opt in through Uber's Trip Preferences, there’s a licensed private hire driver on board overseeing every trip, and ‘a small number of’ Mustang Mach-Es deployed at the start. Service area is, somewhat surprisingly, anywhere in London except the airports.

Meanwhile in London, Baidu's Apollo Go is still testing with Freenow by Lyft in Brent with safety operators aboard, public rides targeted for 2027. Baidu’s fleet has now given over 22 million rides across 27 cities.

Waymo is also doing extensive testing with tens of I-Paces on London streets, but there’s no clear public rides announcement yet.

Lucid and Bolt are teaming up, with Bolt aiming to put at least 25,000 fully autonomous Lucid vehicles on the road across multiple European cities and countries. (link)

The vehicles will be built on Lucid's upcoming Midsize platform and equipped with NVIDIA's Hyperion autonomous-driving hardware. Bolt frames the deal as a step toward its own goal of 100,000 autonomous vehicles running on its platform by 2035.

In a response to me on LinkedIn, Charlotte Eisner, Head of Commercialization and Strategic Partnerships at Bolt, described Lucid’s midsize car as a “very good vehicle platform.” This opens the door to autonomous Lucid Cosmos vehicles being used, or some next evolution of it.

…and that's all I could fit in the Robotaxi Report email today! I actually had to cut out about 20 news items that I have written up from this email, so rest assured, next week’s issue will be equally packed, but with more variety.

This newsletter went out to exactly 14,753 other geeks just like you and me.

Thank you for reading & see you soon - our “regular” EV-focused EVwire newsletter is up next!

— Jaan