Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
East Bay Times reports on new potential California legislation that would require to have adequate local technicians, one for every three self-driving cars. This is due to the disaster traffic jams that Waymo robotaxis caused during the San Francisco power outage in December '25.
TechCrunch reports that an AVRide autonomous vehicle drove over and killed a mother duck - and Austinites are rightfully outraged.
Sam Schwartz and Kelly McGuinness report in StreetsBlog NYC on how that now Waymo robotaxis are paused that this is an opportune time to look into whether robotaxis are useful in the first place. A key point is that if safety is the goal then clearly public transit should be promoted instead.
SF Examiner reports on the new Zeekr vehicles that Waymo wants to use. Though since there is currently a 100% tariff on importing Chinese vehicles into the US, these vehicles are likely to not be a widespread solution due to their cost.
The City reports that Waymo's permits to test some of their robotaxis in New York City has ended. And their permission to run vehicles in the state of New York has reached a dead end. NYC is simply not read for robotaxis, given they have far more cars there than is useful. It appears Waymo never expected to hit such a speed bump in their deployment.
NY Times reports on how Baidu had a major outage in Wuhan, stranding passengers in the middle of busy streets and even causing at least one collision. In fact, robotaxis from China have had a very questionable safety record.
