Autonomous Driving

Waymo One opened fully driverless rides to the public in Phoenix.

Regulators allowed 24/7 paid driverless service in a major dense city.

Tesla began a limited robotaxi pilot in Austin — early and small-scale.

Switzerland's road office (FEDRO) granted Apollo Go a Level-4 permit — Baidu's first robotaxi operations outside Asia. Branded AmiGo with PostBus, open-road trials began 1 June 2026 across ~80 km² of three eastern cantons (St. Gallen, Appenzell) using the driverless RT6; regular fully driverless service is targeted for early 2027, set to be Europe's largest planned automated transit operation.

Stellantis, Wayve and Uber signed a (non-binding) MoU on 17 Jun 2026 to develop and deploy Level-4 robotaxis at global scale — pairing Stellantis' L4-Ready vehicle platforms, Wayve's mapless end-to-end AI driver, and Uber's marketplace, targeting cities across Europe, North America and beyond. Wayve's region-agnostic approach (no city-by-city HD mapping) is pitched as the path to faster, cheaper expansion.

The CPUC cleared Waymo on 14 Aug 2026 to charge for fully driverless rides across 18 counties — 12 in the north (the whole Bay Area plus Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and others) and six in the south (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura) — opening Sacramento and San Diego as new markets. The authority covers freeways, city streets, rural roads and rail crossings, day or night, in rain, fog and hail; only widespread snow or ice is excluded. It is permission, not deployment: Waymo says the rollout stays measured, so most of the approved territory has no service yet.

Zoox began charging fares in Las Vegas on 10 Aug 2026 — the first US operator to take money for rides in a purpose-built vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. It follows a temporary NHTSA exemption granted in July from federal rules requiring human controls, covering up to 2,500 vehicles a year for two years. Zoox had run free public rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco for about a year; fares combine a base charge with distance and time, quoted before booking.

Transport for London granted private hire vehicle licences to a number of Wayve's autonomous Ford Mustang Mach-E cars in early August 2026, satisfying the "triple lock" — operator, driver and vehicle each licensed by the same authority — that London requires for paid trips. Rides remain supervised: a TfL-licensed driver sits at the wheel and can take over. Early trips for part of the 100,000+ interest list Uber built in eight weeks are due later this summer, before a public launch.

Pony.ai, with Singapore operator ComfortDelGro, opened driverless robotaxis to the general public in Punggol on 22 Jun 2026 — bookable by anyone via the Zig app. It is the Chinese operator's first fully public service outside China (April was invite-only) and a notable step in the global robotaxi race; Pony.ai targets 3,500+ robotaxis across 20+ cities by end-2026.

After 100+ Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis failed simultaneously in Wuhan (a cloud outage stranded riders up to two hours), China suspended all new autonomous-driving permits on 29 Apr 2026 — the first nationwide robotaxi licensing freeze.

Tesla began public Austin robotaxi rides with no human safety monitor in the car (22 Jan 2026); by June it covered the entire Austin metro (~245 sq mi, ~13–20 Model Ys), though remote operators can still intervene.

Waymo suspended all freeway rides (San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, Miami) to improve construction-zone handling, after recalling 3,791 vehicles over flooded-roadway incidents — a notable safety pullback on its hardest driving domain.

Crossed 100M rider-only miles, doubling from 50M in seven months.

Roughly 1M rides a month across 10+ US cities, widening its lead.

Driverless service that is broadly available and economically self-sustaining.