EVwire brief: Waymo's robotaxis have disappeared from Uber's app in Phoenix, closing out a partnership that ran in the city for nearly three years. TechCrunch reported the change on Monday, with both companies confirming it.
Waymo says the cars Uber drew on for the Phoenix pilot are back in its own fleet, bookable through the Waymo app, while Uber says it is lining up a fresh autonomous-vehicle partnership for the city, though it won't say who. Waymo robotaxis still run on Uber in Austin and Atlanta.
Both sides framed Phoenix as a starting point rather than a falling-out.
"This was a productive pilot that paved the way for future expansions and partnerships across the globe.[…] We’re grateful to all of the Uber customers who took fully autonomous trips with us, and we look forward to continuing to serve the Phoenix community."
Waymo’s cars that were part of Uber’s network in Phoenix have been folded into the company’s own fleet.
Uber, for its part, stressed how small the program always was.
"Phoenix was our first pilot market with Waymo and was an intentionally limited deployment, reaching just over a dozen vehicles dedicated to the program. We learned a lot from that collaboration, which helped us to quickly scale Austin and Atlanta, where hundreds of Waymo AVs are available exclusively on Uber and our coverage area continues to expand."
Uber stressed that the program really only involved a limited number of Waymo vehicles.
Context:
Waymo says the Phoenix split actually happened back in May, and riders only clocked the missing cars on Uber in the past few days. The setup was always the odd one out, as Phoenix was the only city where Waymo ran both on its own app and through Uber. In Austin and Atlanta, Waymo’s cars show up solely on Uber.
The break comes as Waymo pushes its newest robotaxi onto the road, the Zeekr-built van it calls Ojai, and as its alliance with Uber frays at the edges. The two are on course to compete head-to-head in London as soon as this year, where Waymo is building toward a launch and Uber is backing UK self-driving firm Wayve.
Waymo’s Ojai features the company’s latest autonomous driving hardware.
The pairing looked improbable when it began in 2023. Waymo and Uber had only settled a bitter trade-secrets lawsuit in 2018, and robotaxis were far less proven at the time. In the years since, Waymo has built its fleet to roughly 4,000 vehicles, and Uber has signed dozens of AV partners onto its platform.
Waymo is currently the US’ robotaxi leader today. It runs in 11 major US metro areas, books more than 500,000 trips a week, and is partway through launching in around 20 more cities this year.
Source: TechCrunch
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