Waymo

Alphabet's autonomous vehicle subsidiary operates the largest commercial robotaxi fleet in the United States, providing over 450,000 paid rides per week across six cities. - Leading United States robotaxi operator, rapidly expanding

For years, autonomous vehicle companies kept a basic operational question unanswered: how many humans does it actually take to run a driverless fleet? On February 4, 2026, Waymo's chief safety officer told a Senate committee the number. At any given moment, roughly 70 remote agents oversee Waymo's entire fleet of more than 3,000 vehicles across six American cities — a ratio of about one human for every 43 robotaxis.

Updated 7 days ago

Alphabet's autonomous vehicle subsidiary, operating commercial robotaxi services without human safety drivers. - Operating fully driverless robotaxis in multiple cities

Tesla promised its robotaxis would be safer than human drivers. Seven months into its Austin pilot, the company's own crash reports tell a different story: one collision per 55,000 miles, roughly nine times worse than the human average. Every crash occurred with a trained safety monitor in the vehicle who could intervene—yet the system still failed. On February 3, 2026, Tesla executives defended the program before a Senate committee, insisting autonomous systems are safer than human drivers despite the data.

Updated Feb 5

Alphabet's self-driving unit dominates U.S. robotaxis with over 2,500 vehicles and plans to reach 17 cities by 2026. - Market leader with 450,000 weekly paid rides across five U.S. cities

MIT Technology Review named robotaxis a breakthrough technology on January 3, 2025, marking the moment driverless cars moved from lab experiments to real-world service. Waymo now provides 450,000 paid rides weekly across five U.S. cities. Baidu's Apollo Go matches that in China, operating across 22 cities from Wuhan to Dubai. Tesla, Zoox, and others are racing to catch up.

Updated Jan 8

Waymo’s robotaxis turned a power outage into a visible test of autonomy under degraded infrastructure. - Service resumed Dec 21; acknowledged operational failures; rolled out software updates Dec 24 to handle regional power failures

San Francisco is the kind of city that feels unstoppable—until the lights go out. On Saturday, a substation fire near 8th and Mission helped trigger a blackout that spread across neighborhoods, turned intersections into guesswork, and pushed daily life into slow-motion. Full restoration took until Tuesday morning—more than two days—sparking political backlash and raising basic questions about whether a modern city can tolerate single-point failures in critical infrastructure.

Updated Dec 25, 2025