Waymo

Waymo and Toyota have announced a partnership aimed at competing with Tesla in the development of personally owned self-driving vehicles.

John Krafcik, Waymo founder and former CEO, clapped back at Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his comments on Waymo at Tesla’s earnings earlier this week.

He brought a little dose of reality to Musk’s delusions.

Starting today, the fully autonomous Waymo One ride service is available exclusively to customers in Austin, Texas through the Uber app. Today’s news builds upon Waymo’s existing partnership with Uber and is a milestone in the robotaxi startup’s expansion to new cities around the US.

Chinese EV Automaker ZEEKR is marking its third consecutive presence on the display floors of CES. During this year’s event, ZEEKR began teasing at least three new models scheduled to launch in 2025, some of which will feature an NVIDIA DRIVE Thor-based smart driver domain controller. In addition to those codenamed models, ZEEKR is also planning to launch another NVIDIA DRIVE Thor-equipped EV called “RT” in the US to be used by robotaxi developer Waymo.

There are still many questions surrounding the plausibility of full-fledged autonomous robotaxi operations around the world, but Waymo, one of the current leaders in the segment, is putting at least one stigma to rest. A new study conducted with the help of reinsurance provider Swiss Re used hundreds of thousands of liability claims to demonstrate that robotaxi vehicles using the Waymo Driver platform deliver significantly higher safety performance than vehicles operated by a human driver.

Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo is going overseas for the first time and testing its tech in Japan. In early 2025, the company will begin testing its Jaguar I-PACE vehicles in Tokyo, with plans to stay in the region for the foreseeable future.

As promised, robotaxi developer Waymo is expanding its Waymo One service to new US cities. The latest on its service map is Miami, which will see a start of robotaxi testing operations next year before Waymo opens up public rides to all customers. ¡Hasta pronto, Miami!

Waymo has opened up its driverless taxi service to everyone in Los Angeles, without need for an invite code or waitlist, but it still remains with the same service area it had before and doesn’t yet cover the whole area around LA.

After getting a hefty $5.6 billion in fresh capital last week, Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo is now reported to be valued at more than $45 billion.

Today’s episode of Quick Charge is a story of, “Thanks, Joe Biden!” as Ford and LG ink a deal to bring EV battery manufacturing back to Michigan, the city of Louisville gets the nation’s first all-electric garbage truck fleet, and Waymo gets a massive $5.6 billion cash injection.

Robotaxi developer Waymo has closed an oversubscribed Series C funding round totaling $5.6 billion. Alongside an expanded partnership with Uber, the funds will help the rideshare company expand its Waymo-One robotaxi service throughout current and additional cities in the US.

Wayve, a well-funded London-based autonomous vehicle startup backed by Uber and Softbank, will begin testing its “Tesla-like” self-learning automated driving software in San Francisco and the Bay Area. The move marks its first on-road trials outside of the UK.

Waymo has hired Tesla’s former head of vehicle programs, responsible for product and program Management of all Tesla vehicles, just ahead of Tesla’s Robotaxi unveiling.

It’s probably nothing. Just a playful post on social media from a random Volvo account celebrating an obscure concept car from the early aughts. It couldn’t possibly mean that Volvo is actually going to build the thing … right?

Hyundai’s upgraded 2025 IONIQ 5, hitting the US this fall, will join Waymo’s robotaxi fleet. As part of a new multi-year partnership, Hyundai is preparing to allocate a “significant” amount of IONIQ 5 models for the Waymo One robotaxi fleet.

Waymo is adding to its driverless taxi service areas in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is currently testing in Austin in advance of offering rides to the public soon.

On this, extra-dense episode of Quick Charge, we cover Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, Elon Musk talks cheap Tesla cars and cheaper 4680 batteries while promising to finally deliver on that new Roadster from 2017.

While some self-driving tech companies are dialing back their development or scrapping certain vehicles altogether, Waymo is pushing forward thanks to the financial support of parent company Alphabet Inc. (Google), which just committed to a fresh investment totaling five billion dollars.

Starting today, if you order from Uber Eats in Phoenix, Arizona, your order might get assigned to a driverless Waymo vehicle.

Waymo has announced that it will start offering fully autonomous ride-hailing services to the general public in Los Angeles starting tomorrow, March 14th, and that Austin, Texas will open up “later this year.”

An autonomous Waymo car hit a cyclist in San Francisco yesterday – but luckily the cyclist had only minor injuries. Still, it’s bad news for urban cyclists, and for Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle division, which is already having a tough time shaking off all the bad buzz from the Cruise disaster.