Waymo to dominate US robotaxi market in 2024, but Tesla, Zoox are imminent | Real Time Headlines

although General Motors Corporation’s Decide shutter The United States has never been closer to a driverless future with the launch of its Cruise robo-taxi business earlier this month.

For the self-driving car industry, 2024 will be remembered as the year that at least one major U.S. player— letterWaymo, which owns the company, has seen the dawn of mainstream adoption and made strides toward commercial viability.

Previously, the domestic self-driving car industry had a difficult start.

After a decade of massive venture capital investment in AV companies, Uber The company sold its self-driving business in 2020, two years after a fatal crash Ford gave up its stake in robotaxi developer Argo.AI. 2023, cruise ship pause All driverless operations following a collision have resulted in investigations and pause Its license in California. When General Motors decided to exit the self-driving taxi business earlier this month, it had already invested $10 billion in Cruise.

Waymo may have surpassed Cruise as the U.S. market leader, but domestic rivals are also trying to catch up — most notably Musk’s Automaker Tesla and AmazonOwn Zoox.

According to reports, the huge market share of taxi services in the United States and abroad is in jeopardy. Researched by Fortune Business Insights predicts that the global ridesharing market will grow from US$123.08 billion in 2024 to US$480.09 billion in 2032.

As 2025 approaches, here’s where these major players stand.

Waymo leads the way

In 2009, Google launched the “Dedicated Driver” project, which this year has become a public commercial robotaxi service covering many cities in the United States.

The company said on Wednesday that the program, which was renamed Waymo in 2016, has completed more than 4 million paid self-driving rides. That number is more than triple a year ago, when Waymo said it had completed about 700,000 driverless rides.

Waymo’s service currently operates in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, covering more than 500 square miles of public roads.

The company dropped the digital velvet rope in June, Open It provides robo-taxi service to all San Franciscans who can request a ride through the Waymo One app. Open to the public, it demonstrates to riders and internally that the company’s self-driving fleet can operate well in the complex traffic conditions of urban environments.

In July, Alphabet’s then-CFO Ruth Porat declare Google’s parent company made a multi-year investment in Waymo worth the equivalent of $5.6 billion A total of $5 billion came from Alphabet.

Company insiders told CNBC that Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov told employees at an all-hands meeting in November that they should scale as aggressively as possible but prioritize safety in all efforts.

A big focus for Waymo in 2025 is to expand its robo-taxi service to more cities, win over riders, and continue to develop new technologies that will allow the company’s self-driving cars to operate in more weather and traffic conditions.

Waymo plans to launch commercial services in the following regions Austin and Atlanta, Texaswill provide ride-hailing services through the Uber app next year. Testing has also started Miami The rides are planned to be available to the public in 2026.

Earlier this month, Waymo announced the launch of its first international testing destinations In Tokyo. Waymo said it is partnering with taxi app GO and Nihon Kotsu, one of Japan’s largest taxi operators, to begin trial rides in early 2025.

Waymo showed off its new generation In August, the company will partner with Chinese auto giant Geely to produce self-driving cars. Waymo’s customized hardware and software will be integrated into Geely’s Zeekr electric SUV. For this new robotaxi, Waymo was able to reduce the number of cameras on the vehicle from 29 to 13, and the number of expensive lidar sensors on the vehicle from five to four.

The company also announced in October a partnership with Hyundai Motor to integrate the automaker’s Ioniq 5 SUV into Waymo’s fleet. The companies said they will begin testing the Waymo Ioniq 5s by the end of 2025.

Waymo has been conducting test and validation drives of its Jaguar I-Pace and newer Geely Zeekr vehicles at test tracks in Detroit, Buffalo, N.Y., and Columbus, Ohio, to see how the systems perform in different types of traffic. And the weather.

Given Waymo’s progress and growing presence on America’s streets, it received a lot of social media and publicity in 2024, stirring both joy and controversy.

In the Reddit channel R/Waymo, users documented every incident involving the company, including a crowd gathering in February Attack a Waymo vehicle and set it on fire. The forum also analyzed instances of Waymo vehicles colliding or blocking traffic.

Another incident went viral when a woman Posted on X In September, she was trapped in a Waymo robotaxi when two men stopped her outside and asked for her phone number.

To maintain public trust in the safety of its services, Waymo has built a large public affairs operation, releasing a more detailed safety report in 2024 and working closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, first responders and authorities in the cities where it operates.

Tesla unveils robotaxi concept

Tesla CEO Musk has been promising “self-driving taxi” cars for about a decade. He’s claimed every year since 2016 that the company is about a year away from realizing his vision, but Tesla still doesn’t build robotaxis or operate a driverless ride-hailing service.

While Tesla didn’t deliver on its promise of a 2024 robotaxi, Musk revealed the look and feel of Tesla’s “dedicated robotaxi” during an event at the Burbank Film Studio in California in October. He called the car the Cybercab and said Tesla hopes to produce it by 2027 and sell it for less than $30,000.

This fan-favorite robotaxi concept is a two-seat robotaxi with butterfly doors and no steering wheel or pedals. The Peterson Automotive Museum has added a Pre-production Cybercab Collected earlier this month.

At the October event, Tesla also showed off the Robovan, a low-clearance self-driving bus with an Art Deco design aesthetic.

Musk promised that once the system is upgraded, Tesla’s Model Y and other vehicles will implement robotaxi functions as soon as 2025. Model Y vehicles without safety drivers also circulated in a closed environment at the event’s studio grounds in Burbank, demonstrating how Tesla envisions them serving as robotaxis.

At the time of the “We, Robots” event, Tesla had yet to apply for licenses and permits that would allow it to operate commercial robotaxi services in major U.S. markets where city or state authorities require such services.

Despite the lack of permits and licenses, Musk told analysts during an October earnings call that Tesla had developed a “development app” that would allow employees to hail rides that would take them anywhere in the Bay Area.

Bullish investors say Tesla could deliver on its promise of self-driving technology as soon as next year, but critics remain skeptical, in part because Musk has repeatedly missed robotaxi deadlines.

Tesla currently sells driver assistance systems, including its standard Autopilot option and a paid option called Full Self-Driving Supervision. In communications with government agencies, Tesla said these “semi-autonomous” systems are not suitable for robotaxis. Tesla says in the fine print of its electric vehicle manual that FSD and Autopilot require a human driver behind the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

This year, Tesla corresponds to Austin authorities’ safety expectations for its self-driving car technology.

Musk has repeatedly described regulation as an obstacle preventing Tesla from putting self-driving cars on U.S. roads. During Tesla’s earnings call on October 23, Musk said he would use his influence over the president-elect Donald Trump Establishing a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.”

However, AV policy expert Bryant Walker Smith rejected the idea The regulations limit the robo-taxi operation of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University School of Law. Walker-Smith wrote, citing Waymo as an example: “Self-driving vehicles can—and in fact can—be lawfully deployed and regulated under existing federal statutory law.”

Zoox “toaster” heats up

Long before Tesla showed off its Robovan and Cybercab designs, Zoox received important approval in February to carry the public in self-driving cars in Foster City, California, this year.

Founded in 2014 and acquired by Amazon in 2020 in a roughly $1.3 billion deal, Zoox has developed a unique self-driving shuttle with large side windows, inward-facing seats and no steering wheelI, Driver’s seat or traditional windshield.

A spokesperson for Zoox told CNBC that in March, Zoox expanded the environmental conditions that its self-driving cars can handle on public roads, including “driving at night, driving in light rain and wet road conditions, and a top speed of 45 miles per hour.”

The company’s vehicles can comfortably carry four adults and luggage, and the small shuttles feature calming lighting, ambient music and interior cameras to monitor what’s going on inside the cabin. Some early riders described the appearance of Zoox vehicles as “Futuristic hot dog toaster” or”Toaster on wheels.“

Under the leadership of CEO Aicha Evans, Zoox aims to provide free rides to more members of the public Early next yearand then open to paying customers and the public.

The service will start in Las Vegas and expand to San Francisco, the company told CNBC. It will start with an early rider program called Zoox Explorers, allowing selected users to ride Zoox for free and provide feedback.

Zoox’s robotaxis are currently on public roads in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Foster City, and this summer, Zoox will begin test Its test fleet is still on the road in Austin and Miami.

The company has also been attracting senior talent. One recent notable recruitment is Zheng GaoHe once served as the head of Tesla’s autonomous driving hardware design team and is currently the hardware engineering director of Zoox.

Cruise ships closed

Despite clear demand for robo-taxis in the U.S., General Motors surprised some long-time industry observers earlier this month when it announced it was exiting the business.

“Cruise is moving into the robotaxi business, but when you look at the fact that you’re deploying a fleet of vehicles, it’s a real challenge,” GM Chief Executive Mary Barra said on a conference call announcing the strategic change. It’s a whole operations department doing this.

The Detroit automaker will now focus on developing so-called “personal self-driving cars” rather than robotaxis. GM has not yet determined how many of Cruise’s 2,300 employees will join the broader technology team.

Cruise founder Kyle Vogt sold Cruise to General Motors in 2016 and left the company in November 2023. “If it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now: General Motors is a bunch of fools.” Posted on X after the automaker announced it was pulling out.

An early entrant into the U.S. robotaxi market, Cruise halted its driverless operations in October 2023, shortly before Vogt left. NHTSA fines Cruise $1.5 million for failing to disclose details serious car accident That month involved a pedestrian.

third party investigation event GM and Cruise found that cultural issues, incompetence and poor leadership contributed to the crash.