September 2, 2026

The Robotaxi Went From Demo to Your City This Week

Waymo opened Denver, San Diego and Tampa on Tuesday, Tesla shows its two-seater with no steering wheel on Thursday, and the two companies spent the weekend arguing on the internet about whether cameras are enough. The people getting hurt so far are the test drivers.

The facts:

• Waymo began offering paid rides to the public in Denver, San Diego and Tampa on Tuesday, bringing its service to 14 US cities with a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles and about 500,000 paid trips a week (TechCrunch)
• Nevada approved up to 1,000 Waymo vehicles in the Las Vegas area over the next year, and Waymo plans launches in London and Munich (TechCrunch)
• Tesla charges for driverless rides in modified Model Ys in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, pulled safety monitors from most of those cars only in recent weeks, and is expected to unveil its Cybercab, a two-seater with no wheel or pedals, on September 3; a filing shows a target of 125,000 a year (TechCrunch)
• Waymo's software chief wrote that after 200 million real-world miles "cameras are incredible, but they aren't enough," and that a pure end-to-end AI driver will "run the risk of black box failures"; Tesla's approach is cameras only, and Musk has called lidar a "crutch" (TechCrunch)
• Waymo's sixth-generation system uses 13 cameras plus lidar and radar, runs two onboard computers in parallel so one can take over from the other, has backup braking and steering, and makes every driving decision in the car; remote staff answer questions but can't drive it (Fox News)
• Waymo recalled software on 3,871 vehicles this year after robotaxis drove into closed freeway construction zones in Phoenix and the Bay Area (Fox News)
• OSHA records show test drivers at Waymo and Zoox suffered more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 from hard braking and sudden movements by the vehicles, including whiplash that sidelined some for months; other companies may not have to report (TechCrunch)
• London's rollout has slipped past this year because the transit authority hasn't published the rules companies must follow; Uber and Wayve say 100,000 Londoners are on a waiting list (The Guardian)
• The Teamsters sued California's DMV over new rules allowing driverless trucks over 10,001 pounds, saying the state skipped a required economic study; the union puts the first-year cost above $280 million, and California employs more than 130,000 truck drivers (Los Angeles Times)
• Waymo's cheaper next-generation minivan, built by China's Zeekr and subject to import taxes, is the only vehicle riders will get in Denver and San Diego (TechCrunch)

Two years ago the driverless car was a San Francisco thing, the kind of story you'd watch a video of and forget. This week it's Tampa. Denver. San Diego. Half a million paid rides a week in 14 cities, which is a bus system's worth of trips with nobody up front.

The fight that broke out over the weekend sounds technical and isn't. Waymo says you need cameras plus lidar plus radar, three different ways of seeing, because after 200 million miles its data says one kind of eye fails in ways the other kinds catch. Tesla says cameras and a big enough neural net are all a human has, more or less, and everything else is a crutch. Waymo's engineer put it plainly: the best models still hallucinate, and "there is no click reboot" when the thing hallucinating is your car.

Thursday, Tesla shows a two-seater with no wheel. If it works at scale it wins on cost, because Tesla builds its own cars and Waymo buys minivans from China and pays the tariff. If it doesn't, the argument settles itself the hard way.

what's actually in the car

The Fox piece answers the question every first-time rider asks. There's no employee in an office with a steering wheel. Two computers run the same job side by side; if one fails the other takes over and, at worst, pulls the car to a stop. Backup brakes, backup steering, separate power. Every decision happens in the vehicle, not in a data center. The people you can reach remotely give the car information, like "that's a construction cone, not a person." They don't drive.

That's real engineering and worth respecting. It also doesn't cover the recall: nearly 4,000 vehicles got a software fix after they drove into closed highway construction zones. The computers were fine. The understanding wasn't.

the people it's already hurt

Here's the part the launch announcements skip. Sean O'Kane pulled OSHA records and found more than two dozen injuries to test drivers at Waymo and Zoox over two years. Not from crashes. From the car braking hard or lurching, over and over, day after day, while a person sat in the seat to catch it. Whiplash. Months out of work. Other robotaxi companies probably have the same injuries and don't have to report them.

So the safety story has an asterisk. The public gets a driver that never gets tired, and the cost of teaching it was paid by the people whose whole job was to sit there and absorb the mistakes.

the trucks

The passenger car is the friendly version. The Teamsters' lawsuit in California is about the version that matters for wages: a 26,000-pound truck with no one in it. California just allowed them, with a half-million-mile certification per stage, and the union says the state never did the economic study the law requires. The number they cite is $280 million in the first year, in a state with 130,000 truck drivers. The startup building trucks with no driver's seat says it doesn't expect to replace drivers anytime soon. The union does not believe him.

London can't launch because the transit authority hasn't written the rulebook, and says it isn't in a rush. Munich is next year. Las Vegas approved a thousand. The robotaxi is going where the permits are, and the permits are going where the politics let them.

Every city on the list so far is a warm one. Snow is a technical problem for the car, and it's also the reason the northern half of the map is still empty.

Sources: TechCrunch (three pieces), Fox News, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times.