Waymo's Expansion Is Leaving Tesla In The Dust

Industry Discussions Autonomous Vehicles
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https://insideevs.com/news/788284/waymo-expansion-tesla-cities-2026/
Waymo is now operating driverless rides in 10 cities.

After a flurry of expansion announcements last year, the rubber is actually hitting the road.

On Tuesday, Waymo opened up public rides in four additional cities: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando. That brings the total number of metro areas where you can order a Waymo to 10. (The others are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta, Austin and Miami.)

Waymore is fast out the gate. Or could this be a story that turns into the tortoise and hare fable?

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Maybe. But first out of the gate was CompuServe (before AOL), and long before Facebook came MySpace. Motorola’s RAZR had a decade on the iPhone and the Newton was out well before the Palm Pilot.

There are lots of things to be figured out before any one can be called successful. Costs, marketing, hitting the right app and customer interface, pricing, etc. It’s a long way off yet, I think.

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Waymo tripled its trips over the previous year and likely to do the same again this year. In the meantime Tesla seems stuck in the blocks.

Tesla recently removed the safety operator and chase cars from its Robotaxi service. But according to the robotaxi tracker, there have been a total of eight fully autonomous robotaxis identified. Of these, it looks like most have completed fewer than five total trips (usually about two). Seven vehicles haven’t been spotted for greater than two weeks. The last ride was two days ago, which coincidentally happened to be a pro-Tesla social media influencer.

Public reports indicate the fully autonomous robotaxis only operate on a few blocks in Austin. So Tesla is just barely, barely scratching the surface, at least operationally.

Also in the news, Tesla still doesn’t appear to be applying for AV ride hailing permits in California.

I’m also very skeptical AI4 hardware be able to achieve L4 autonomy except in very limited circumstances. The AI5 chip won’t be available until 2027, so I think Tesla might have a ways to go.

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