Robotaxi Report #5: Ojai there

This newsletter couldn’t happen without our long-time partner, Voltera. Here’s a quick intro in Voltera’s own words:

“Voltera develops and operates charging infrastructure engineered for autonomous mobility.

Our sites deliver reliable high-power charging in key geofenced zones, helping robotaxi fleets maximize uptime and scale from pilot programs to full commercial deployment.”

Important: this newsletter does not go through any editorial overview of Voltera’s team, nor can they influence any of the reporting — the words in this newsletter are to be blamed on me alone.

Those of you that have been reading my newsletters for a while need no introduction to Revel - we’ve been tracking them ever since they jumped from mopeds to the nice bright blue Teslas and rideshare in 2021, then started the fast charging hubs in urban locations (mostly NYC area), then in mid-2025 decided to drop rideshare (now including Kia EVs) and go all in on fast charging.

Today, we’re coming the full blue circle on that (look at the logos above, it’s perfect), as Voltera and Revel combine businesses. (link)

Together they will create a large-scale EV charging infrastructure platform focused on autonomous vehicles, electric fleets, and ride-hail deployment in dense urban markets.

The combined company is expected to operate under the Voltera name and include more than 1,000 charging stalls operational and under development across 11 major U.S. metro areas.

As part of the transaction, EQT - which backed Voltera from start - will serve as the majority owner of the combined company. Hinting at EQT essentially acquiring Revel and wrapping it together with Voltera? Global Infrastructure Partners, a part of BlackRock and Revel’s existing lead sponsor, will retain a minority stake.

P.S., there are no added insights from the Voltera side other than what I pulled from their press release here; public information only & and the italics are purely my outside speculative view on the deal.

If one theme defined Waymo's last few weeks, it wasn't expansion (although it did have news on that) or safety stats. It was floods.

It started in San Antonio. On April 20, an unoccupied Waymo got swept into Salado Creek floodwaters and wasn't recovered until four days later.

A separate unoccupied unit had to be pulled from high water near McCullough Avenue earlier that same month. The result: Waymo recalled its entire fleet, all 3,791 robotaxis, and pushed an OTA update to keep vehicles out of potentially flooded, higher-speed roads. (link)

The “recall” software update was a geofence lock remedy, not an actual fix.

The recall language is the part worth reading closely. Waymo's fix so far is a scope constraint (weather-related operational controls plus map changes), and the company openly states it "is developing the final remedy for this recall." In other words: the real fix isn't built yet.

On the plus side, we got to learn the full extent of the Waymo fleet — 3,791 vehicles.

Now in May, we saw another incident which proved that even geofence-locking the Waymos out of flood areas is not enough for an intermediary fix.

On May 20, during heavy rain in Atlanta, another unoccupied Waymo drove into a flooded intersection and sat stranded for about an hour (video):

Why did this happen despite the geofence remedy? Waymo says the Atlanta floodwaters rose faster than the National Weather Service alerts.

By the very next day, May 21, Waymo paused operations in Atlanta, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Austin and Nashville.

From the streets: Sam Schwartz rode a Waymo in SF, which suddenly told mid-ride that the ride is over, nowhere near his destination.

Here’s a clear error in adjusting to the situation, where my best guess would be that the geofence of the Waymo ride changed while riding and the dropoff was suddenly in the NoGo Zone.

The support said: call an Uber of Lyft. Here’s the video of how not to handle operations, no matter what the underlying reason for ride ending was.

After all this, it wasn't Waymo's only pause that same week.

Separately, Waymo halted freeway rides in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami while it reworks how the cars handle highway construction zones, keeping them on surface streets in those cities for now.

The trigger, by multiple accounts (but still reportedly), came on May 19, where X user @Elliot_slade posted a video claiming that his Waymo ride “The Waymo blasted through cones, swerved huge trucks and sped away from the cops.”

Waymo said to TechCrunch it’s in the process of integrating “recent technical learnings into our software and expect to resume these routes soon.”

On the brighter side — we’ve been seeing the Waymo Ojai vehicles — the Zeekr RT robovans — finally making a bigger appearance on the robotaxi hubs, and just yesterday, they announced Ojai will start giving rides in SF, Phoenix, and LA. (link)

The Ojai is built by Zeekr, Geely's premium EV brand, in Ningbo, China, then shipped to Waymo's Mesa, AZ facility for autonomous hardware integration. Inside, it's a van-like cabin with sliding doors, a flat floor, low step-in height, and three large LED screens.

Accessibility is baked in the Ojai from the start: embedded braille, screen-reader compatibility, and seat-integrated support handles throughout. Worth noting: the Ojai does have a steering wheel, which was added to meet current regulatory requirements, even though early concepts showed none.

Interestingly, Ojai has 40% fewer sensors in this 6th-gen Driver system, as the sensor suite includes 13 cameras, 6 radar sensors, and 4 LiDAR units with heated, self-cleaning housings for all-weather operation.

And even in a month of service pauses, Waymo announced scaling to 1,400+ sq miles across 11 cities ahead of the World Cup, and is now past 20M+ paid rides.

📍 Location: Irving, Texas

Permits from Tesla show a 35,000-sqft warehouse remodel to dispatch, service and repair vehicles, clean & detail, charge with 16 V4 Supercharger stalls, and has space for up to 212 vehicles. (link)

Unclear if wireless charging is planned for the site yet. The filings were uncovered by Tesla infrastructure tracker MarcoRP:

Tesla community member Spencer visited the proposed site shortly after and shared a video outside the warehouse connected to the filings, the one in the thumbnail up there.

Why this matters more than the shiny car (I think the term for Cybercab is glossy actually): this is the layer I keep calling the enablers. Tesla does it itself, but we are, in this newsletter, also tracking all the others in the space.

I’ll also have a unique resource coming up around robotaxi enabling layer depots, showing it to you soon. (PS — Insiders get the first look)

Meanwhile, Tesla has been staging its dedicated Robotaxis — Cybercabs that are now in production ramp-up — in some parking lots here and there, in the tens.

Just yesterday, Elon shared a video of Cybercab driving itself out of the Giga Texas factory (video).

On the Cybercab — Lars Moravy said last week that Cybercab has achieved 165 Wh per mile efficiency (that’s 102.5 wh/km or 10.25 kWh/100km), which he claims, I haven’t verified, makes it the most efficient production EV ever certified.

While we’re on Tesla’s topic, here’s a group of Tesla owners/testers showing the ultimate proof that Tesla is building a generalized solution for self-driving vehicles:

Devin Olsen, David Moss (yes, the LiDAR salesman who ran the coast-to-coast on FSD in the US too), and Spencer Scott launched their challenge on May 24 from Horseshoe Bay near Vancouver, aiming for a Tesla store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which is a 5,955-km route through mountains, prairies, and construction.

As of me writing this on early Friday, their 2025 Model 3 with FSD version 14.3.3 had handled 100% of the driving, including a 1,263-km day from Sault Ste. Marie to Quebec without disengagements. 3,706 miles (5,964 km) done as of right now.

The team rotates supervision while streaming live, with a significant amount of people tracking progress and planning a public finish celebration Friday in Halifax.

The tracker showed above is live (here) and pulling straight from the Tesla telematics. They are on the road right as you’re reading this.

In a similarly great feat, Zack (@BLKMDL3) just recently set the NYC to LA FSD Cannonball run record with his Tesla Model 3 — Zero disengagements or human intervention on FSD v14.3.2 for 2,833 miles.
Total time: 49:55:57, beating previous record by ~8.5 hours! (link)

Meanwhile, just last week Tesla surprisingly launched FSD (Supervised) in Lithuania (of all places) as second in Europe after Netherlands (link), showing it is indeed possible to fast-track the approval with RDW’s results.

Now, we are seeing different behind-the-scenes action from Belgium (testing), Spain (testing for a while), Greece (said it wants to be second third), and Estonia (currently deep in details) to get the system approved, ahead of the EU-wide decision.

Tesla said, that within the 1.5 months that the FSD (Supervised) has been live in Europe, Tesla owners have already covered 20 million kilometers (12.4M mi) with the system engaged.

I've been covering EV industry through my newsletter for 5.5 years now. And I love it when I see things come full circle from the early days.

The screenshot below is from my newsletter that I sent out about one of ROCSYS' first public demos back in - checks notes - in 2022.

This went to just 1,388 of you back then.
There are 14,001 of us now.

Quoting myself from 2022:

"At first, I couldn't find too many use cases for a robot arm charging your EV. I've landed on two (real) benefits in addition to the convenience of 'I don't need to step out'

* If we ever reach the fully autonomous future (or our kids?), the car can go charge itself."

Today, I can share with you that Rocsys is doing exactly that:

Rocsys has unveiled the Rocsys M1, a hands-free charging system designed to serve multiple bays simultaneously for robotaxi fleets. And it raised a $13M Series A. And signed "a major robotaxi deal" for rollout. (link)

The robotaxi world caught up with the best real use case of their system.

And this time we could share it as a whole article of ours, in a robotaxi newsletter. Funny how the world works out.

As for the "(or our kids?)" piece in the brackets of my original quote, I do have two more kids since then, so the thing in brackets is also kind of true ;)

The remote overwatch is there for the full time of operations currently (as opposed to one robotaxi support tending to tens of cars on robotaxi services), as the CEO & co-founder Julian confirmed to me.
Bliq aims at private car ownership rather than a hailing fleet. Germany's next.

Also, few know this, but Estonia has actually created some of the most AV-friendly laws years ago (ask me how I know), seems like Bliq made use of it.

Reading tip: Life At Wayve: Inside Global Fleet Operations (link)

Watch tips: Residents of one Buckhead street in Atlanta watched up to ~50 empty Waymos circle their cul-de-sac in a single early-morning hour, repositioning to wait for ride requests. (video) It went as far as neighbors installing a fake barrier resulting in, you guessed it, chaos.

My favorite comment on the YT video: “It's Waymo mating season. In a few months you'll be infested with little baby Waymos.”

Tesla has finally shared unredacted federal incident reports covering 17 robotaxi-related crashes and minor contact events in Austin and other test areas, one of the clearest looks yet at its real-world testing. Before that, Tesla kept most of the details under wraps. Our breakdown of each 17 incidents is here: (link).

Some outlets ran with it as a "major safety controversy."

The reports themselves tell a quieter story: mostly low-speed stuff like curb scrapes, mirrors clipping fixed objects, tire damage, and several cases where a stationary Tesla got rear-ended by another driver, scooter, bus, or pedicab. No major injuries, no catastrophic crashes, and most incidents happened with safety monitors on board.

Of all the cases, this one seemed the weirdest:

So the teleoperator (the guy in some room with a steering wheel and monitors remotely operating the vehicle when needed as a last resort) took over the car, drove it into a metal fence, and the safety driver had no option but to just sit and watch?

And there was another one similar incident with a teleoperator at 9mph, too.

🇺🇸

California's DMV adopted its most sweeping AV rules yet:

First, heavy-duty autonomous vehicles over 10,001 lbs can now be tested and deployed on California roads for the first time, opening the state's freight corridors to driverless trucks.

Second, and more relevant to us: starting July 1, police can issue traffic citations directly to the AV company when a vehicle breaks the rules.

That closes the gap from the viral moment last year when a San Bruno officer watched a Waymo make an illegal U-turn and had, in the department's words, no "box for robot" on the ticket.

The package also requires operators to respond to first-responder calls within 30 seconds, comply with geofencing near emergency zones, license their remote operators, and report more safety data (immobilizations, hard-braking, collisions).
The DMV calls it the most comprehensive AV regulation in the US to date.

It's already spreading beyond California: Nashville just passed a law letting its police cite Waymo directly for traffic violations, the same mechanism California is adopting.

And of course they should get a ticket for every violation.

🇬🇧

The United Kingdom opened applications for self-driving passenger services last week. Britain's Department for Transport is now letting operators apply to run taxi-, bus-, and private-hire-style autonomous services, with public bookings possible by the end of 2026, the first time UK law has allowed commercial passenger-carrying AVs.

Expected applicants include Wayve, Uber, Waymo, and (notably) China's Baidu Apollo Go via Uber and Lyft. It all feeds into the broader Automated Vehicles Act due in the second half of 2027.