Robotaxis Accelerate, Ride-Hailing Leaders React
November 2024
Waymo’s robotaxi activity is picking up. Zoox is about to launch its service. Chinese players are forging ahead. And massive investments continue in this space. Uber and Lyft are noticing and taking action as Tesla will eventually join the party and finally deliver on its robotaxi promise.
Autonomous driving (AD) hype peaked around 2017 before hitting a low in 2021-2022. Since then, we have observed a consolidation of the industry and the collapse of a number of players whereas a few leaders have emerged and are now showing the way. I provided more insight on this phase of the industry my articles “Robotaxis: Balancing Tech, Regulations and Public Acceptance“ (July 2023) and “Darwinian Evolution of the AD/ADAS Tech Ecosystem” (July 2024).
The USA and China continue to lead the way for both robotaxis and autonomous trucking whereas Europe seems stuck at the regulatory stage. In the robotaxi space, industry leaders have emerged including Waymo, Cruise (needs to re-emerge) — and potentially Zoox soon — in the USA, as well as Baidu, WeRide, Pony.ai and AutoX in China. Tesla recently presented a purpose-designed, 2-door vehicle with strong ambitions.
Robotaxi Volumes and Service Launches are Picking Up
Waymo seems to lead the pack globally (see above). The Alphabet subsidiary is now performing about 150k paid rides per week (without safety operators), up from 100k last August and 50k last June. These rides take place in Phoenix (since 2019), San Francisco (2023) and Los Angeles (2024 although just recently opened to the general public). The company intends to start commercial service in Austin in early 2025 and then in Atlanta.
Even though Waymo does not report its fleet size, it is estimated at 700-1000 vehicles. As this fleet must grow, the company is partnering with OEMs to integrate its tech more deeply and efficiently in order to reduce cost and increase safety and reliability. To this end, the company recently announced a partnership with Hyundai to build a version of the Ioniq 5 that is fit for purpose. This will likely replace a previous collaboration with China’s Zeekr which could suffer from political tensions.
GM subsidiary Cruise is planning a comeback in multiple cities after a thorough strategic review and new management as a result of its October 2023 mishap in San Francisco. The company aims to restart rider-only, paid rides in 2025.
Launched in 2014 and acquired by Amazon in 2020, Zoox has confirmed its intent to start a commercial service in San Francisco and Las Vegas in a few weeks. I had a chance to ride in the company’s purpose-built vehicle (see interior below) around its Silicon Valley HQ and was quite impressed although the ride was short.
In China, Baidu announced last August its Apollo Go service was averaging about 75k rides per week — though it is unclear how many are performed without a safety operator. Other companies (mentioned above) operate a robotaxi service in multiple cities, including Pony.ai which has a fleet of about 250 vehicles — and about 150 autonomous trucks engaged in commercial activities.
Tesla continues to announce the imminent launch of a mature-enough AD tech (FSD) that would enable the morphing of this existing fleet into money-making robotaxis. To bring further focus on this opportunity, the company presented the CyberCab, a purpose-designed two-door vehicle in October. However, FSD is not yet ready for show time — I just trialed v12.5 which is better than the v12.3 I tested last April (see my article) but it is not robotaxi-ready yet!
Investments Keep Flowing to Accelerate Deployment
Waymo’s success has made it possible to secure the financial means needed to continue its growth. The company recently announced raising $5.6B — at a $45B valuation! Other companies in this space have also announced large capital raises over the past year or so including Wayve ($1B).
In the autonomous trucking space, Stack, Aurora Innovation and Waabi raised respectively $1B, $483M and $200M. Commercial launch is nearing for Aurora which recently postponed it by a few months to April 2025.
Chinese players also continue to raise more money. WeRide was successfully introduced on the Nasdaq in October, collecting $440M in the process — it is currently valued at $4.7B. Likewise, Pony.ai is planning its own IPO, also on the Nasdaq, with an introduction at $4.5B (see below).
Even if several of these players are — or will soon be — operating commercially, they are still burning large amounts of cash and will mostly continue to do so for a while. Consequently, more funds are needed to launch or sustain growth. Interestingly, Baidu’s Apollo Go expects its robotaxi business to break even in Q4 2024 and aim for positive cash flows in 2025.
Ride-Hailing Companies Partner to Leverage Robotaxi Deployment
Ride-hailing operators Uber and Lyft in the USA and DiDi in China all launched in-house initiatives to develop AD tech in the mid 2010s. They saw robotaxis as a way to reduce operating cost thus gain a larger share of the urban mobility market.
In the USA, Uber created Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) in 2015, and Lyft built Level 5 in 2017. The former sold its AD entity to Aurora Innovation in 2020 for $4B and the latter to Toyota Woven in 2021 for $550M. The amount of investment required was too high to be sustainable for the two US players. In China, DiDi started to develop AD tech in-house in 2015 but never gave up — Valeo announced in 2023 its intention to invest in DiDi Autonomous Driving.
Uber and Lyft are now feeling the pressure to defend their turf as robotaxi activity is picking up. They are forming multiple partnerships to gain access to the technology and attract AVs to their platforms.
Featuring 150 million monthly global users, Uber has been the most active with several AV-related partnership announced since August 2024. The ride hailing company will be Waymo’s exclusive deployment partner in Austin and Atlanta starting in 2025 — interestingly, Uber will also manage and maintain the fleet. GM’s Cruise signed a multiyear agreement to bring AVs to the Uber platform, and so will WeRide starting in Abu Dhabi at the end 2024. Other partners include UK-based Wayve in which Uber is also investing.
Earlier this month, Lyft announced partnerships with Mobileye and May Mobility with the aim to bring robotaxis to its platform. Thanks to the former, fleet operators will be able to deploy vehicles equipped with its AD tech that are ready to interface with Lyft’s infrastructure. The latter will deploy its own AVs on the Lyft platform in Atlanta starting in 2025, with the intent to scale across other cities later.
Robotaxis are a reality and will be increasingly common. I have ridden comfortably with Waymo and Cruise many times in San Francisco where they are now part of the mobility landscape. By the end of 2025, these vehicles will be commercially available in five US cities and in at least as many in China. Europe (and Japan) will have to wait longer but that it will have a robust regulatory framework which the USA lacks!
Marc Amblard
Managing Director, Orsay Consulting