Robotaxi ventures making slow but sure progress

Despite economic and technical headwinds, robotaxis are making progress — one neighborhood at a time.

Waymo and Cruise, the two companies offering commercial driverless service in the U.S., have expanded their service territories in their respective launch cities in recent months and promise broader service ahead.

Their endeavors in San Francisco should be closely watched. Cruise, the General Motors subsidiary, offers service there now. Waymo has extensively tested on the city's streets, but on Tuesday the California Public Utilities Commission again delayed a vote on Waymo's application to begin commercial robotaxi service there.

Progress can feel tenuous. City officials have bristled at the propensity of Cruise autonomous vehicles blocking intersections because of technical glitches and how AVs have hindered first responders in emergency situations.

How the companies fix such problems and collaborate with city officials will go a long way toward improving upon the status quo — and establish a blueprint for how they'll expand into more cities in the future.

Riders, enthusiasts and industry observers should all prepare for "a slow-drip adoption," suggests McKinsey and Co. senior partner Philipp Kampshoff.

Here is the current outlook for 10 of the leading robotaxi ventures.

The Google subsidiary Waymo intends to put its driverless vehicles on Uber's ride-hailing platform this year in the Phoenix area, where it has commercially operated since 2018. The number of actual automated vehicles involved in the collaboration have not been revealed, nor have the financial terms of the deal.

But those vehicles will have a wide swath of territory where they can operate. Waymo's commercial driverless service area in greater Phoenix and the East Valley region has expanded to 225 contiguous square miles. Waymo is also providing rides to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and it connected to Arizona State University in May.

Those routes are now served with the company's Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles. Waymo largely retired its fleet of Chrysler Pacificas this spring. Down the road, the Zeekr robotaxis that Waymo designed with Geely will be added to the fleet. The company is expected to begin testing on the Zeekrs this year.

Beyond Phoenix, Waymo has been running a "Trusted Tester" program in San Francisco. In May, the company added to the locations those riders can access. Waymo is waiting to begin driverless commercial operations in San Francisco, but the California Public Utilities Commission again delayed a vote on the company's application until Aug. 10.

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt has affirmed expectations the company remains on track — if not ahead of plans — to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2025.

It's a bold statement considering at least one big question is hanging over the company: When will it launch its specially designed Cruise Origin? Parent company GM is preparing for volume production at Factory Zero in Detroit.

Cruise has sought an exemption from federal regulators to deploy a vehicle without traditional driver controls on public roads. GM and Cruise await an answer.

Cruise operates in San Francisco with as many as 150 Chevy Bolt AVs on the road at once. But the vehicles have encountered technical difficulties, such as stalled cars blocking traffic, that have flustered city officials. Cruise fleets in Phoenix and Austin, Texas, could reach a comparable size by the end of 2023, Vogt said.

In May, Cruise said it commenced supervised driving in Houston and Dallas, which means a human will be in the driver's seat. That's all a part of what Vogt calls a "rapid-scaling phase" of the company's business.

Nearly a decade after its founding, Zoox's specially designed robotaxi finally reached public roads in February. The company's vehicle received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to carry employees along a two-mile, round-trip route linking its Foster City, Calif., headquarters to a nearby office.

In June, the company further forged ahead in Las Vegas, deploying its robotaxis on public roads. Zoox employees are the lone riders for now on a one-mile loop near the company's Nevada offices.

Amazon-backed Zoox's vehicles contain neither steering wheels nor brake pedals. The company self-certified its robotaxis meet federal safety standards last year. But NHTSA wants to know more. Regulatory officials opened an audit query into the company's self-certification in March, the results of which could set an industry precedent for how robotaxis reach the road.

Zoox has not yet said when it anticipates beginning driverless commercial operations.

Baidu, the Chinese Internet and artificial intelligence company, obtained a license in June to offer its Apollo Go commercial driverless service in Shenzhen. That marks the fourth Chinese city in which such service is offered. With the new license, the company's robotaxis will be permitted to operate across an area of about 72 square miles.

The Shenzhen deployment hastens Baidu's expansion. Apollo Go has provided commercial robotaxi service in Chongqing and Wuhan since August 2022. With all its operating territories combined, Baidu claims it's conducting business in the world's largest "fully driverless ride-hailing area."

Baidu said it has provided more than 2 million autonomous rides. The company intends to add 200 robotaxis this year to its fleet.

In June, Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma said the company expects to commence driverless commercial service by the end of the year, according to The Korea Economic Daily. The service is expected to start in Las Vegas using Hyundai Ioniq 5 EVs, which replaced the BMW vehicles that had been the mainstay of Motional's fleet.

The company is a joint venture in Boston between Hyundai Motor Group and global supplier Aptiv.

Motional has been making steady progress in Las Vegas, where it has been testing for five years with vehicles on the Lyft ride-hailing network. This year it expanded autonomous operations there to nighttime hours.

Los Angeles is slated to be the company's second market. Motional already offers public rides there with human safety drivers behind the wheel. It also conducts food deliveries via an Uber Eats partnership in nearby Santa Monica.

In December, Motional inked a 10-year partnership agreement with Uber to offer commercial robotaxi services across multiple markets. Motional has additional operations in Pittsburgh, the Bay Area, San Diego, Singapore and Seoul.

The Toyota-backed venture May Mobility took a notable new direction with its latest testing deployment. In April, the startup launched an on-demand transit service in the retirement community of Sun City, Ariz., in partnership with transit provider Via. The vehicles use human safety drivers on each ride. The approach is reminiscent of the low-speed, retirement-village-centered approach modeled years ago by Voyage before it was acquired by Cruise.

Sun City marks May Mobility's fourth active deployment. Others are ongoing in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Grand Rapids, Minn.; and Arlington, Texas.

The company has concentrated on partnerships with existing transit companies. The venture said in April that, in addition to Via, it is working with mobility-as-a-service provider Moovit, a step that will help fill "gaps in public transit."

Unlike other frontrunners in the segment, such as Waymo and Cruise, global automated-tech supplier Mobileye has no plans to manage its own ride-hailing fleet. Instead, the Jerusalem company plans to sell its self-driving system to partners, which includes German companies Schaeffler Group, Sixt, Benteler, Deutsche Bahn, and most recently, Volkswagen.

Another differentiator for Mobileye is its two-pronged approach: The company develops both advanced driver-assistance systems and fully autonomous technology. It uses a radar-and-camera system for the driver-assistance systems. And in its plans to achieve higher levels of autonomy, it adds an independent second system reliant on lidar as a cross-check.

A big benefit to having millions of driver-assistance systems in production and on the road is that Mobileye is crowdsourcing data from those vehicles. Another benefit: Revenue from driver-assistance systems today builds a financial bridge to a point when autonomous-systems become profitable.

That strategy earned Mobileye the top-ranked spot among all companies on consulting firm Guidehouse Insights Automated-Driving Systems leaderboard in March. Sam Abuelsamid, the report's author, wrote in an assessment of Mobileye's strategy and execution that the "combination of ADAS and ADS business puts Mobileye at the head of this pack."

The German automaker has reprised a portion of its Argo experiment. Last week, VW executives said they intend to start a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, as early as 2026. As many as 10 VW test vehicles will ply the city's streets by the end of the summer with human safety drivers aboard. The vehicle platform is Volkswagen's ID Buzz vans, and VW will utilize Mobileye's self-driving technology in the vehicles.

If this all sounds familiar, it's because it's similar to the plan that Argo AI had been honing in Austin and other cities until Ford and Volkswagen, Argo's two main investors, pulled the plug on the startup last October. Now VW is back with a new autonomous division — the Autonomous Driving Mobility Transportation and new tech partner.

Chinese automated-vehicle company WeRide said in October that it is developing a hydrogen-powered robotaxi alongside Hyundai, marking the first time a hydrogen powertrain has been developed for a passenger-carrying autonomous vehicle.

The company, which over the past two years has announced partnerships with automakers Nissan Motor Co. and China's Guangzhou Automobile Group, is eyeing automated-driving systems for a variety of vehicles, such as delivery vans and street sweepers.

Aurora Innovation, which in December 2020 took over Uber's project to develop autonomous vehicles, proposes to deploy its self-driving system in both trucks and robotaxis. But the company is concentrating on trucking to start, with commercial big-rig deployments expected to begin in Texas by the end of 2024. Though Aurora tests with the Toyota Sienna now, efforts on a robotaxi program won't begin in earnest until a later date.