Supervised Robotaxis Are Having a Moment. Unsupervised Robotaxis Are Having a Decade.

<p>This week on <a href="https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomy-markets/">Autonomy Markets</a>, <a href="https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/grayson-brulte/">Grayson Brulte</a> and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo’s California regulatory moat, Cybercab’s pending commercial launch and Uber’s string of supervised launches in Europe and Dubai.</p><p>In California, <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/robotaxi/waymo/">Waymo</a> is completing 1.4 million fully autonomous rides per month, a 10X growth rate over two years. Additionally, the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) granted <a href="https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/waymo-big-miami-plans/">Waymo</a> commercial driverless expansion authority across 40,000 square miles, covering roughly 25 million California residents and giving Waymo an estimated two-year regulatory moat over competitors.</p><p>Waymo also opened service to all riders in Houston, its 10th market, with San Antonio likely to follow, and launched the Zeekr-built Ojai to all riders across San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix while introducing its own custom silicon chip to boost compute performance and drive down vehicle costs.</p><p>While Waymo continues to scale, Tesla is preparing for a Cybercab commercial launch in Austin following first-responder training sessions with local fire departments. Then there is Uber, which is focused on expanding globally.</p><p>In Dubai, <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/robotaxi/baidu-apollo/">Baidu’s Apollo Go</a> went live on the Uber app, allowing riders to explicitly select an autonomous ride or be assigned one when booking Comfort or UberX.</p><p>In London, <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomous-driving-licensing/wayve/">Wayve</a> and Uber launched early trip access using supervised Ford Mach-E vehicles, though debate remains over who will secure the critical Autonomous Passenger Service (APS) permit. <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/robotaxi/pony-ai/">Pony AI</a> also touted its growing Uber partnership during earnings, though its planned European expansion faced scrutiny over ODD limitations and safety driver supervision.</p><p>In sidewalk delivery, <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/delivery-bots/avride-delivery/">Avride</a> is expanding its autonomous campus delivery fleet to 1,000 bots across 25 universities this fall. Following its split from Uber, Serve Robotics quickly pivoted by cutting deals with <a href="https://indices.roadtoautonomy.com/