News You Can Use: "Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s"

News you can use for a few more years at any rate. 

From The Conversation, August 6:

Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain 

Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly 9 million people in the U.S.

These findings stopped me in my tracks because those two jobs rely on the same thing as my own work: maps.

I have spent more than two decades staring at maps. Not paper maps on a wall, but digital ones with multiple layers: flood boundaries draped over census blocks, car crash hot spots plotted against road geometry, and satellite readings of rainfall stitched across river basins. Much of my work as a civil and environmental engineer is done through GIS – that is, geographic information systems. Engineers like me hold several spatial relationships in their minds at once, reasoning about where things sit relative to one another across scales ranging from a city block to a whole watershed.

I always assumed that spatial reasoning across map layers was purely professional. But that study on taxi and ambulance drivers made me wonder whether all that mental work might be doing something good to the brain.

Taxi driver brains 
Of the 9 million death certificates from January 2020 to December 2022 that researchers examined, taxi and ambulance drivers had the lowest risk of dying from Alzheimer’s disease out of 443 occupations. After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer’s, compared with 1 in 60 people overall.

This pattern did not extend to other driving jobs. The researchers concluded that the key to reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s was not driving itself but continuous real-time navigation: the constant work of locating yourself in space, tracking a destination and updating a mental map as conditions change. Drivers whose jobs relied on fixed or predetermined routes, like bus drivers and aircraft pilots, didn’t seem to experience a similar advantage....

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No mention of GPS, curious. 

However! From Bloomberg's CityLab, July 31:

A London Taxi Family Confronts the Driverless Future 

With more than a century of combined experience behind the wheel, the Gouldings now face their greatest challenge yet: Waymo, Wayve and Baidu. 

I wasn’t sure at first whether the taxi driver who arrived for my usual predawn work pickup had also driven me a few days before. The name was different, but Ron looked curiously similar to my driver from last week.

Time and light banter eventually cleared things up. I hadn’t been hallucinating before my caffeine hit — my two recent drivers were identical twins. More interesting still, the twins were the sons of a taxi driver whose own mother kept cabbies fueled with tea, coffee and sandwiches from one of London’s traditional Cabmen’s Shelters. Two other brothers had also followed their father into the trade. Together, they form a remarkable London taxi family.

The black cab business has been good to the Gouldings. It hasn’t made them rich, but it provides a very comfortable living — without a boss to answer to. This proud clan’s heart is David, 70, the family patriarch, who took up the trade 42 years ago to support his young family. With his twin sons Ron and Billy, 44, following in their father’s footsteps — and their younger brothers, David, 40, and Harry, 38, close behind — the Goulding tradition spans more than a century of combined experience behind the wheel.

Like many long-standing traditions, the world in which they operate — London’s taxi trade — keeps confronting new threats. The centuries-old industry has survived wars, the onslaught of Uber, and Covid. Black cabs remain one of London’s defining symbols for many, alongside Buckingham Palace, Sunday roast lunches and Paddington Bear.

But the trade faces perhaps its greatest disruption yet: competition from vehicles with no driver at all. Still in testing mode, autonomous taxis could, pending government approval, offer driverless rides to Londoners by the end of the year. Their arrival could arguably prove a greater shock in the city than elsewhere. London is, after all, home to the world’s most thoroughly trained cabbies, who spend up to four years completing “the Knowledge” — a famously rigorous memorization of the city’s street plan.

The Map in Their Minds

Introduced in 1865, the Knowledge remains one of the world’s toughest professional qualifications. Candidates master the city’s streets through intensive visualization, training so rigorous that studies have shown it can physically reshape the brain. One study even found that London cabbies outperform GPS navigation apps in some respects.

Ron would agree. While he occasionally uses navigation apps to verify obscure addresses, he says GPS often misses taxi-only routes. He recalls winning over one skeptical passenger by ignoring the satnav and taking a faster route using bus lanes which are open to licensed taxis in the UK. The passenger was so impressed that he left a tip and said, “I trust you.”....

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Back in 2015 we were already seeing:

Uber Introduces Its Video Knock-off of "The Knowledge"

A month ago This Is Money was reporting that the number of drivers taking "The Knowledge", the notoriously difficult geographical test required to become a London black-cab driver, had dropped by two thirds as new aspirants hooked up with Uber and GPS rather than the black cabs.

Well now Uber has rolled out a video game version of The Knowledge for its San Francisco drivers, call it "Grand Theft Uber"....

"Waymo Plans End of Uber Robotaxi Tie-Up, Stepping Up Rivalry"

Waymo is another of the ulti-multi-decacorns. In February they announced the completion of a $16 billion Series D financing round at a $126 billion post-money valuation.

From Bloomberg, July 24:

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo is exploring options to exit its robotaxi partnership with Uber Technologies Inc., the latest relationship twist between two companies that have functioned as both rivals and partners.

Uber currently offers rides in autonomous Waymo vehicles on its platform exclusively in two US cities — Austin and Atlanta — after ending a more limited partnership in Phoenix last month. An Uber spokesperson said that Waymo has given notice that it plans to launch service through its own app in those cities in January 2028 “alongside their existing deployment with Uber.” This “would end Waymo’s exclusivity in Austin and Atlanta and allow us to launch with other AV providers in those cities, which we will be prepared to do,” the spokesperson added.

The current fleet of Waymo vehicles will remain on Uber’s platform through at least May 2028, the duration of the current contract, Uber said. The Financial Times Waymo explores split with Uber as robotaxi tensions deepen earlier that Waymo was exploring options for exiting the partnership.

“We believe in a vibrant and collaborative AV ecosystem that champions innovation and provides riders with a choice in how they experience this technology,” said a Waymo spokesperson. “This is essential to the industry’s future and to our vision of making the Waymo app and the safety of our technology available to riders everywhere.”

Shares of Uber slid 4.3%, closing Friday at $65.94 in New York, the lowest level in more than a year. Alphabet’s stock was up less than 1%.

The rift is a major setback for Uber, which has been developing partnerships with Waymo and fleet managers, and investing in other robotaxi companies in the hopes that it can one day be the go-to aggregator for driverless and human-operated rides. Waymo, the leading robotaxi provider in the US, also competes with Uber in key rideshare markets such as San Francisco and Los Angeles with its consumer app.

The absence of new developments from Uber and Waymo’s multiyear partnership has helped fuel anxiety about their relationship for months. Since launching the Atlanta service last June, Waymo hasn’t announced new cities where its vehicles will be available on the Uber app. Instead, the Alphabet unit has forged ahead with the standalone Waymo app and has launched in six more cities outside San Francisco and Los Angeles.

With almost every new Waymo announcement without Uber, Uber’s stock has taken a hit on fears that Waymo’s growth will eventually erode the ride-hail company’s business, which reported an annual profit for the first time only in 2023. Even as Uber has announced partnerships with other driverless car companies on planned service in the US, Middle East and Europe, Wall Street has remained unconvinced. The stock has fallen almost 20% so far this year....

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Autonomous Vehicles: "Is China Cooking Waymo?"

From ChinaTalk, February 11:

China's AV companies are expanding globally and pushing to control the supply chain 

In terms of international expansion, Chinese firms are way ahead of the American competition. Chinese companies have worked out Autonomous Vehicle (AV) deployment deals with more than thirteen countries. The US: two. Chinese companies are also exporting something closer to a full autonomy stack — vehicles bundled with cloud services, AI traffic management systems, and road sensors.

There’s also the supply chain. Unlike frontier AI models, where US export controls on Hopper and Blackwell GPUs have genuinely constrained China’s progress, AVs operate in a different hardware regime. Here, the leverage between the US and China is more evenly matched, and in some cases, inverted.

Today’s Content:

1. AVs in the US and China

2. The International AV market

3. Who has leverage in the AV supply chain

At times, this piece reads like a typical “US vs China” article, but in fact we’re seeing more of a “co-opetition” dynamic Kevin Xu highlighted in the AI industry. In fact, the perhaps more interesting aspect is how the line between “Chinese AV company” and “US AV company” blurs in practice. Chinese AVs use NVIDIA chips, Waymo uses Chinese-made Zeekr vehicles, and Uber and Lyft partner with Chinese AV firms internationally, not to mention critical minerals. The industries are too tangled for neat distinctions… but let’s try to untangle them anyway.

1. AVs in the US and China
The US has Waymo. China has its “big three”: Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide, and Pony.ai (whose founders ChinaTalk interviewed last year).

There are other potential players in the US, like Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla (RIP GM’s Cruise). But right now, Waymo is the only American company operating a scaled, paid Level-4 robotaxi service, which enables vehicles to handle all driving tasks within specific operating zones. China also has BYD and Xiaomi with L2 driving features (who could transition to L4 soon), and many more robovan, robus, robodelivery, and robotruck companies on track for L4 deployment.

In aggregate terms, China appears to have the edge in overall deployment. An analysis by SCSP suggests Chinese autonomous-vehicle operators have collectively logged roughly 149 million autonomous miles, compared to around 106 million miles for US firms — a roughly 1.4 to 1 advantage.1

But mileage comparisons are limited. Companies report different levels of autonomy, mix supervised and driverless miles, and disclose data unevenly across jurisdictions. Ridership is a different way to look at it, where China has completed ~30 million rides, versus ~20 million for the US (Breakdown in Appendix 1).

Different Services
Ridership itself misses a big part of the story, because China’s AV industry extends beyond passenger ride-hailing. By the end of 2024, more than 6,000 driverless delivery vehicles were reportedly operating across 100+ city zones. Companies such as Neolix, Zelos, Meituan, JD Logistics, and Alibaba’s Cainiao are actively piloting or scaling operations for shipping, food delivery, and street-cleaning vehicles....

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Graphics - some quite interesting - omitted. 

"The Peter Pan Economy: Waymo and the Market Distortion of Infinite Runway"

Rather than Peter Pan, how about "Forever Young"?*

A very sharp piece from Chris Guo at his Soft Currency substack, January 28:

A Case Study on the 17 Year-old Startup That Refuses to IPO 

There is a strange species of company in Silicon Valley. They’re famous. They’re worth billions. They employ the smartest people on earth. And they share one defining characteristic: They refuse to grow up.

I call them Peter Pan Companies:

• Take the autonomous vehicle platform, Waymo. Born in 2009, Waymo is a 17 year-old “startup.” In human years, it should be driving itself to prom. In startup years, it should be a grumpy public company issuing dividends and battling short sellers. Instead, it is living in its parents’ basement (Alphabet), and asking for a larger allowance (a new $15B round at a $100B valuation).

• Or take OpenAI. It burns $8 billion a year, lives in Microsoft’s guest house, and its CEO has “0% interest” in getting a real job (IPO).

The Three Dangers of the Peter Pan Economy

If this sounds vaguely like the plot of an endearingly ridiculous rom-com starring Matthew McConaughey, you might find this analogy risible. But if you are operating in the new tech economy, here’s why a 17-year old company that fails to launch is not a joke.

First, for employees like engineers and product managers, Peter Pan companies are Talent Black Holes. They hoard the top 1% of talent by offering Soft Currency (paper equity in a $100B company) that may never be liquid. You need to understand this dynamic during interviews and separate monopoly money (paper equity with no realistic exit) from equity that will actually turn into wealth.

Second, for founders and CEOs, Peter Pan companies distort the Laws of Business Physics. They release products at unnaturally subsidized prices. If you try to compete with their pricing or feature set, you will go bankrupt (cough - Argo AI, Uber ATG, Embark Trucks, TuSimple US, list goes on…) You need to identify which competitors are real businesses (must make a profit) and which are strategic hobbies (can burn cash forever), because you cannot fight a hobbyist with a P&L.

Finally, for VCs and investors, these companies set a False Market Tempo. When OpenAI raises at 100x revenue, it convinces your portfolio founders that scale is all that matters. This leads to a generation of startups burning cash to hit vanity metrics that public markets no longer care about. You need to spot the Peter Pan traits early so you don’t accidentally fund a copycat that doesn’t have a rich parent.

To illustrate exactly how these Peter Pan traits manifest, we have exclusive access to a strictly confidential (and definitely real) memo from the Waymo leadership team to their anxious employees.

CONFIDENTIAL // INTERNAL USE ONLY

From: The Office of the Co-CEOs

To: All Waymonauts (Full Time & Contractors)

Date: January 26, 2026

Subject: REFLECTIONS: The Road to 1 Million (and Beyond)

Team,

As we approach our 17th year of revolutionizing mobility (one geofenced block at a time), it is truly humbling to see how far we’ve come. We are officially on track to hit 1 million paid weekly trips, up from 450k just a few months ago. The expansion into San Diego is live, and seeing our Jaguars navigate the complex coastal terrain of North County is a testament to everything we’ve built.

However, during yesterday’s All-Hands, it was clear based on the Dory upvotes that one question remains top of mind: “When is the IPO?”

We want to address this directly, with the transparency and intellectual honesty that defines our culture.

On The Timeline

Many of you have pointed out that in 2015, we predicted a driverless world by 2020. You ask, “Why are we still in Early Access mode in 2026?”

It is important to remember that mobility is an asymptotic curve. Solving the first 99% of driving (cruising in sunny Phoenix) was the easy part. The final 1%, the long tail of construction cones, erratic pedestrians in hoodies, and heavy rain, is infinitely complex.

This requires patience, capital, and a refusal to release a product that is merely “good enough” (unlike some competitors we won’t name).

On Our Evolving Team

We also want to acknowledge the bittersweet departures of some of our longest-tenured colleagues this quarter. To the members of the Early Guard who are moving on to new adventures: we salute you.

While it is true that we have successfully rotated out the original 2009 team, and 2016 team, the pioneers who built the prototype are not always the best suited to polish the fleet. We are entering a new phase of Operational Excellence, and your fresh energy is exactly what we need to steward this asset for the next decade.

On Our Relationship with Alphabet

Finally, let us be crystal clear about a rumor circulating on Blind: Waymo is an independent company. We are not merely a data collection subsidiary for Google.

That said, our partnership with Alphabet remains our greatest strategic advantage. As part of our Synergistic Intelligence Initiative, please continue to prioritize all bulk data requests from our siblings at Google DeepMind.

When the Gemini team asks for “high-fidelity Lidar scans of pedestrian interactions,” it is not because we are training their models. Ensuring that our data flows seamlessly into their training clusters is critical to our shared mission… collaborating on safety.

So, let’s keep our eyes on the road. The public markets will be there when we are ready. In the meantime, we have the most enviable runway in the history of Silicon Valley.

Let’s go get that million.

The Leadership Team

Waymo // A Subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

How to Spot a Peter Pan Company

Whether you are investing multiple years of your life as an employee, your own money as a founder, or your reputation as a VC, you need to be able to kick the tires on a company.

Here is the 3-point inspection guide, using Waymo as an illustrative example.

1. The Broken Assumptions Check

No company raises billions without someone smart making some back-of-the-envelope assumptions that promise eventual profit and justify the burn.1

For Waymo, this intellectual air cover came from Burns/Jordan at the Earth Institute (Columbia University), which calculated the unit economics in terms of cost-per-mile from removing the driver (labor) and switching to electric propulsion (lower maintenance/fuel). It was a rigorous mathematical argument that a collectivist utopia of shared autonomous vehicles is cheaper than the 100-year-old model of selling private cars to individuals so they can keep their smelly gym sneakers in the trunk.

And from a RethinkX Report (Seba and Arbib 2017), which used a trademarked “Disruption Framework,” essentially a proprietary term for extrapolating two lines on a graph, to predict falling technology costs (Wright’s Law) and swift adoption of Transport-as-a-Service....

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*Here's Alphaville:

Apparently water and gravity are key ingredients in the Peter Pan lifestyle/(non-) life-cycle.

"Nvidia takes on Tesla with what Jensen Huang calls the 'ChatGPT moment' for self-driving" (NVDA; TSLA)

A deep dive from Yahoo Finance, January 11:

"The ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here — when machines begin to understand, reason, and act in the real world."

So said Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang at CES in Las Vegas, throwing down the the robotic gauntlet in a statement about the GPU maker's latest autonomous driving move.

Nvidia's Alpamayo is a chain-of-thought, reasoning-based vision language action (VLA) model used for self-driving cars and robotaxis, which the company said is designed to integrate perception, language, and action planning in making decisions.

Huang played a video of Alpamayo in action during his presentation. In it, a test vehicle navigated the streets of San Francisco, performing maneuvers like that of a human driver, without any interventions.

The big question now is whether Nvidia has created a system that is superior to Tesla's (TSLA) and is on par with what Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Waymo is doing with its best-in-class robotaxis.

Solving for autonomous driving — the Tesla neural net approach

 

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang introduces Alpamayo autonomous vehicles during Nvidia Live at CES 2026, ahead of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, on Jan. 5. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Huang is extremely bullish on autonomous driving. The CEO said he sees a future with a billion autonomous cars on the road. Nvidia has been plugging away at self-driving tech for over 10 years now. Last year, Huang predicted physical AI solutions like autonomous driving would be a "multitrillion-dollar" opportunity.

At CES, Huang said the upcoming Mercedes CLA EV would be the first to implement Nvidia's full self-driving (FSD) stack that includes Alpamayo in Q1, and that it plans to have to autonomous robotaxis — like Waymo's — with partners like Uber (UBER) and Lucid (LCID) by 2027. Currently, Alpamayo is Level 2 advanced, meaning it can operate autonomously but requires human supervision.

All the major players in the autonomous space have the same goal, which is Level 4 autonomous, meaning the cars are fully self-driving within a geographic zone. While Waymo has achieved this in some markets, at the moment Tesla and Nvidia's current DRIVE Hyperion system are at Level 2. Nvidia is targeting Level 4 capability with Alpamayo soon.

Katie Driggs-Campbell, a professor at the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, told Yahoo Finance that she's impressed so far by Nvidia's progress, though she warns that that PR hype can overtake reality.

On its face, Alpamayo is a step beyond what Tesla is doing with its closed FSD system, which powers its EVs and robotaxis, Driggs-Campbell said, though Tesla's system requires supervision at this time, meaning its Level 2 autonomy. Nvidia's Alpamayo claims to be aiming for Level 4 when fully deployed, and FSD aims to get there as well with further software updates.

Tesla's FSD is an end-to-end neural network trained on massive amounts of real-world fleet driving data to make perception and control decisions. Tesla shifted from rule-based control and separate modules, per an Elon Musk edict, to a single neural network system that goes from camera input to vehicle control outputs, with no explicit reasoning....

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"Uber and Lyft announce plans to trial Chinese robotaxis in UK in 2026"

From the BBC, December 22:

Chinese robotaxis could be set to hit UK roads in 2026 as ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft announce partnerships with Baidu to trial the tech.

The two companies are hoping to obtain approval from regulators to test the autonomous vehicles in London.

Baidu's Apollo Go driverless taxi service already operates in dozens of cities, mostly in China, and has accrued millions of rides without a human behind the wheel.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said the news was "another vote of confidence in our plans for self-driving vehicles" - but many remain sceptical about their safety.

"We're planning for self-driving cars to carry passengers for the first time from spring, under our pilot scheme – harnessing this technology safely and responsibly to transform travel," Ms Alexander said in a post on X.

Uber said in June it would bring its plans to trial UK driverless cars forward as the government sought to accelerate framework to allow pilots of small autonomous "bus and taxi like" commercial services in 2026.

"We're excited to accelerate Britain's leadership in the future of mobility, bringing another safe and reliable travel option to Londoners next year," it said of its Baidu partnership on Monday.

Lyft said in August it would look to deploy driverless taxis in the UK and Germany as part of a European agreement with Baidu.

It already operates "autonomous rides" in Atlanta, US - where Uber also operates a robotaxi service through its partnership with Waymo.

Lyft chief executive David Risher said in a post on X on Monday London passengers would be "the first in the region to experience Baidu's Apollo Go vehicles".

But both firms still need to convince regulators.

Mr Risher said if green lit, Lyft's initial fleet of dozens of Baidu Apollo Go cars would begin testing next year "with plans to scale to hundreds from there".

But Jack Stilgoe, professor of science and technology policy at University College London, said driverless cars "can't just scale up like other digital technologies".

"There's a big difference between having a few test vehicles using public streets as their laboratory and a fully-developed, scaled-up system that becomes a real transport option for people," he told the BBC....

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Exiting from November 21's "‘Robotaxi has reached a tipping point’: Baidu, Nvidia leaders see momentum as competition rises": 

As noted in the outro from December 2024's "Beijing unveils plans to boost driverless vehicle use in capital": 

For folks who don't obsess about this stuff and read every bit and byte, a reminder that Baidu is Tesla's partner in Chinese robotaxis. If interested see some of the links in December 8's "There May Be Something To This Robotaxi Stuff: Uber And Lyft Got Spanked On Waymo Opening Florida Market (GOOG; UBER; LYFT; TSLA)" 

Years ago (2017) we were posting "Interview With CEO Robin Li on Baidu's (and China's) Goal Of Ruling Artificial Intelligence". 

May 2024 -  "Baidu Launches New $28,000 Robotaxi In Wuhan"

Although we had two posts on the subject I may not have emphasized enough how big an opportunity Elon Musk's deals with Baidu actually are. First, some background:

China has a communist government, they pick winners and losers in business, that's what communists do.

We first became aware of how important this understanding is in the case of the Chinese rare earth companies. Here's a snip from a 2009 post, "Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co., Ltd. UP 10% Wednesday (600111: Shanghai)", this is a couple years before the twenty-tweens rare earth mania....

August 2025 - "Lyft and Baidu plan Eurobocab launch, starting in UK and Germany next year"

Uber CEO Says Robotaxis Are A Trillion-Dollar Business (Asia is the key)

From Business Insider, December 11:

Uber CEO says robotaxis are a 'trillion-dollar-plus' business — and one market will drive the boom 

• Uber CEO says one market will lead the robotaxi boom.
• Dara Khosrowshahi said robotaxis are a "trillion-dollar-plus" industry and Asia has major potential.
• The ride-hailing giant has been leaning hard into autonomous driving.

Uber is preparing for a robotaxi surge, and its CEO says one market will drive it.

Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview with Bloomberg Television published Friday that robotaxis are a "trillion-dollar-plus" opportunity and Asia is a huge growth market for the ride-hailing giant.

"I expect to be in 10-plus markets by next year. And we want those markets to be in the Asia-Pacific region as well," Khosrowshahi said. Uber has self-driving vehicles in the US and the Middle East.

Analysts have long touted autonomous mobility as one of the biggest bets in the transportation industry. In 2023, McKinsey estimated that if robotaxis and roboshuttles scale, the shared-mobility market could reach $1 trillion by 2030.

Khosrowshahi said Japan has "great potential" for its robotaxi push, despite being behind in regulation.

"With an aging population, there's a real need for transportation, not just in the large cities but in the rural areas," he added. He also pointed to Hong Kong and Australia as potential key markets for its robotaxi services.

Khosrowshahi said Uber now works with more than 20 autonomous-vehicle partners — including China's Baidu, WeRide, and Pony.ai, as well as Waymo in the US.

"We will have access to autonomous technologies in the large cities and markets that really count," he added....

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February 2015 - The End Of Mass Car Ownership Is Coming Mr. Ford 

May 2015 - Big Money: Uber Guts Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab To Hire Autonomous Car Developers
Raising money at a $600 illion zillion fafillion valuation allows you to buy pretty much anything.
The way this is going to pan out is: you won't be able to own the vehicle but its use will be mandated. The car is autonomous but the people aren't.... 

Which led to June 2016's "Uber Is Stealing Scientists, But Only So It Can Lay Off Drivers":
Ain’t no partnership like an Uber partnership, cuz… an Uber partnership will leave your previously elite research institution bereft of researchers....

August 2015 - Understanding The Future Of Mobility: On-Demand Driverless Cars  

March 2017 - Remember that time Uber's Kalanick said having autonomous was crucial to the company's very survival? (a deep dive) 

 

September 2025 - "The economics of self-driving taxis" (GOOG; UBER)

You want economics? Here's a nasty person on the economics:

"When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes 
cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below 
the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

—Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, May 28, 2014

 

And a few hundred more posts between the bookends. 

"The self-driving taxi revolution begins at last"

From The Economist, November 24:

It’s Waymo complicated than it looks 

IN 1995 RESEARCHERS from Carnegie Mellon University drove 3,000 miles from Pittsburgh to San Diego without their hands on the steering wheel. The “No Hands Across America” tour marked the start of a long road trip towards autonomous driving in America. Thirty years later you can, at last, see the fruits of that journey in the proliferation of self-driving cabs in several cities across America. Soon they will be braving the less predictable weather—and the left side of the roads—in London and Tokyo.

The number of American cities on the robotaxi roadmap is rising fast. Alphabet-owned Waymo, which has the world’s biggest fleet of 2,500 autonomous cars, provides paid rides in five places—Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area—and plans to more than double that number next year. Elon Musk’s Tesla has expanded its rudimentary robotaxi service (which still has a human “safety monitor” in the car) from Austin to San Francisco. Zoox, an Amazon-owned company that has built a quirky-looking cab without a steering wheel or pedals, offers autonomous ride-hailing in Las Vegas and has just launched in parts of San Francisco. Like Doctor Dolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, it can go in both directions.

Many people still have concerns about the technology. In a recent YouGov survey, three-quarters of Americans said they had little or no trust in self-driving taxis. Yet their misgivings may be at least in part the result of unfamiliarity. Another poll by J.D. Power, a consumer-research firm, found that confidence was 56 percentage points higher among those who had ridden in a robotaxi than those who had not. What is more, the number of people who have given one a try is growing speedily. In April Waymo surpassed 1m monthly active users (MAUs), according to Sensor Tower, a data provider, more than a ten-fold increase in two years (see chart).

Waymo and its competitors are not the only companies lured in by the promise of the technology. Others looking to cash in include traditional ride-hailers such as Uber, carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, and technology suppliers such as Nvidia—not to mention the vibrant robotaxi ecosystem emerging in China.

They are betting that the market for self-driving technology will prove to be vast. Americans currently spend around $50bn a year on ride-hailing. Then there is the possibility of selling self-driving software to carmakers and manufacturers of other vehicles, such as long-haul trucks and delivery vans. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, has said that the market for self-driving technology could be worth $1trn or more in America alone. That raises two questions: when will the autonomous revolution hit full speed; and who will come out ahead?

To answer these questions, start with the technology. It is easy to forget the miracle of a self-driving car when sitting in a Waymo or a Zoox, because it quickly feels so familiar that you forget your life is in the hands of a computer on wheels. Unlike other robots that operate in clean, controlled environments such as factories, robotaxis have to deal with the messiness of everyday life—road rage, clueless pedestrians and pets, and weather conditions like snow that can be as soft as slush or hard as a brick wall.

Several innovations have combined to make that possible. Robotaxis rely on sensors such as cameras, laser-based lidars, microphones and radars to assess road conditions, judge distances and manage speed. They then use artificial intelligence both in the car and in the cloud to mimic the way human drivers process such information and react to it. And as robotaxi services have expanded, they have hoovered up ever more data, allowing them to refine their algorithms. The rise of multi-modal generative-AI models, which weave together text, images and sounds, has also accelerated progress, including by making it easier to train autonomous systems using simulations and teach them to react to unusual situations.

For the industry, building confidence that self-driving vehicles are safe is vital. Research conducted last year by Waymo with Swiss Re, an insurance giant, showed that its robotaxis generated 88% fewer property-damage claims and 92% fewer bodily-injury claims than the average human during 25m miles of driving, a performance which has improved further since. But public trust is easily shattered. A grisly accident in 2023 involving a robotaxi operated by Cruise, a competitor to Waymo, became existential after the company failed to provide full transparency during a federal investigation. General Motors, Cruise’s owner, subsequently shut its robotaxi service down.

Such incidents risk setting back the industry’s efforts to win over policymakers. Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Transportation has said it will develop federal regulations for autonomous vehicles, including robotaxis. But there are still myriad state-by-state rules (California has two agencies that regulate robotaxis). Some cities such as Seattle put up roadblocks as well. “Everything we do today is to build trust and safety, and we can’t scale the technology without that,” says Chris Mooney, a Waymo executive.

Still, the speed at which Waymo is accelerating its city-by-city rollout suggests it is becoming increasingly confident in the safety of its service. Turning it into a profitable business, however, is another matter. Human drivers are estimated to account for 50-70% of the cost of a traditional ride-hailing service such as Uber, so stripping them out sounds like a quick way to undercut the incumbents. Yet all robotaxi services currently lose money, including Waymo. (In addition to receiving fistfuls of cash from Alphabet, the company raised $5.6bn in a share offering to outside investors last year.)

That is partly because their vehicles are expensive; they are kitted out with costly safety features and trained on pricey AI chips. And unlike ride-hailing firms such as Uber, which rely on owner-drivers, robotaxi operators have to cover the cost both of acquiring and managing their fleets, including cleaning, fuel, maintenance and parking. They also need human supervisors to monitor their vehicles in case things go wrong.

As a result, Augustin Wegsheider of BCG, a consultancy, estimates that self-driving vehicles cost about $7-9 a mile to operate, compared with $2-3 a mile for traditional ride-hailers and $1 a mile for personal cars. Cutting costs “has not been a priority of the robotaxi companies so far”, says Philipp Kampshoff of McKinsey, another consultancy. “They haven’t even scratched the surface, because mission number one was making the operation safe.” McKinsey estimates that it will take a decade to bring costs below $2 a mile.

Cheaper hardware will contribute. Estimates for the cost of Waymo’s current generation of robotaxis range from $130,000 to $200,000 each. Using the sporty Jaguar I-Pace as the starting point hasn’t helped to keep costs down. This month the company started testing the more modest Hyundai IONIQ 5, equipped with Waymo’s newer generation of self-driving technology which requires fewer sensors. The cost of those sensors is coming down, too. American-made lidars that used to cost around $100,000 are now little more than $1,000.

The economics of robotaxis can be improved in other ways. To keep utilisation of its vehicles high, Waymo’s approach to expansion has been to deploy a relatively small number of cabs in several markets, rather than trying to saturate one in particular, though the tactic has obvious limits. Instead of managing all its vehicles, it is also starting to forge alliances with fleet operators, such as Avis, a car-rental firm, to help handle day-to-day operations.

Off to the races....

....MUCH MORE 

Speaking of CMU:

May 2015 -  Big Money: Uber Guts Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab To Hire Autonomous Car Developers

June 2015 - "Uber Is Stealing Scientists, But Only So It Can Lay Off Drivers" 

November 2016 - the introduction to "Interview: Manuela Veloso Head of Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon University":

Our readers probably know Carnegie Mellon more for the  top-ranked financial engineering program (Master of Science in Computational Finance) but artificial intelligence was pretty much invented at CMU by Herbert Simon and Allen Newell. Simon received the Nobel in Economics but it actually could have been for any of four or five subjects, he was quite the polymath.

Newell had to settle for the Turing award (along with Simon) from the Association for Computing Machinery, probably the root'in-tootin high-falootinest tchotchke in the computer biz.
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence along with the ACM subsequently named an award in Newell's honor. Ditto for CMU.

The University's machine learning department was the first in the world to offer a doctorate and as far as I know is still the largest.
A department, for one branch of AI.

Carnegie-Mellon used to have a world class robotics Institute but Uber gutted it with a combination of cash and stock options leaving a Dean and a couple robots to rebuild.
One of the robots is said to be in advanced negotiations with the Ube-sters....

"Britain might actually win the self-driving car war"

From Odds and Ends of History, November 18:

Britain's bet on Wayve could make a big splash – but we need to pay attention now 

You might not have noticed, but Britain has made a big bet on self-driving cars.

It begins with Wayve, the UK’s leading self-driving company. They will be offering driverless rides through the Uber app from spring next year. If their ambitions are realised, this could redefine how we get around and, with it, our logistics industry and daily commutes.

But even if the tech proves itself, the adoption won’t be smooth. Changes to how we get around are always controversial. The organised opposition to robotaxis will arrive immediately, just as it did with Uber, and ULEZ.

And to be fair, the consequences of the transition will be widely felt, going beyond transport policy, with autonomous cars shaping jobs, safety rules, data rights, and the look and feel of our streets.

Here, though, is the most interesting thing. This could be a technological transition that Britain wins. Unlike personal computing, smartphones, and the current AI wave, where the innovation mostly happened elsewhere, and the conquering companies were headquartered in Silicon Valley, in the self-driving car war, Britain is uniquely well-placed to win.

Our designated National Champion
Just before the last election, Parliament passed the Automated Vehicles Act. As a result, several firms have announced their intentions to enter Britain, including industry giant Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet (aka Google).

However, Wayve is the most interesting, as it isn’t just another self-driving startup with grand promises. They recently demonstrated their AI model can operate in new environments across multiple continents without retraining. It adapts to unfamiliar roads, traffic patterns, and weather conditions.

And the government is along for the ride.

Despite the country being massively cash-strapped, the government announced £36.5 million for automated mobility as part of a £150 million programme supporting the autonomous vehicle (AV) ecosystem. Here, Wayve is the clear frontrunner. So this is an intentional policy choice. Scarce resources are being allocated to support the company. 

Can Wayve outscale Waymo?
The questions then are ‘How do we get this right?’, and ‘Can a British firm compete against a US tech giant?’.

The competition will be tough, Waymo has over 100 million autonomous miles under their belt and operates in several US cities. Ride-hail statistics and the dominance of Uber imply that autonomy is a winner-takes-most market; therefore the government has a natural interest in the British firm winning. Fortunately, Wayve has found a way to compete despite the size disadvantage.

Wayve’s approach is unique and it could enable them to scale faster....

....MUCH MORE 

Previously on Wayve:

December 2023 - HBR—AI Takes the Wheel: New Advances in Autonomous Driving

May 2024 - "Nvidia Backs UK Self-Driving Startup Wayve in $1 Billion Round"

"‘Robotaxi has reached a tipping point’: Baidu, Nvidia leaders see momentum as competition rises"

From CNBC, November 21:

• Baidu CEO Robin Li this week became the latest major tech executive to say robotaxis are at or near an inflection point for broader adoption.
• The company claims its Apollo Go robotaxis are breaking even per car, supporting global business expansion.
• Chinese robotaxi companies are expanding to the Middle East, while U.S. rivals have yet to enter. 

Chinese robotaxi companies are expanding abroad at a faster clip than U.S. rivals Waymo and Tesla— at a time when industry leaders say autonomous driving is finally near an inflection point.

“I think robotaxi has reached a tipping point, both here in China and in the U.S.,” Baidu CEO Robin Li said Tuesday on an earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.

“There are enough people who have [had the] chance to experience driverless rides, and the word of mouth has created positive social media feedback,” he said, noting that the wider public exposure could speed up regulatory approval.

His comments echoed similar notes of optimism in the last few weeks from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Xpeng Co-President Brian Gu — who reversed his previously cautious stance after faster-than-anticipated tech advances. Xpeng is launching robotaxis in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou next year.

It’s a global market with significant growth potential, likely worth more than $25 billion by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs’ estimates in May. 

To seize that opportunity, Chinese companies are aggressively expanding overseas and claim they are close to making robotaxis a viable business, rather than simply burning cash to grab market share.

In the last 18 months, Baidu, Pony.ai and WeRide landed partnerships with Uber that allow users of the ride-hailing app to order a robotaxi in specific locations, starting in the Middle East.

Such tie-ups “will be critical to success” as they enable robotaxi companies to operate more efficiently and reach profitability more quickly, said Counterpoint Senior Analyst Murtuza Ali.  

Expanding on experience at home
Baidu says that since late last year, its Apollo Go robotaxi unit has reached per-vehicle profitability in Wuhan, where the company has operated over 1,000 vehicles in its largest deployment in China.

That means ridership is enough to offset a Wuhan taxi fare that’s 30% cheaper than in Beijing or Shanghai, and far below prices in the U.S. or Europe. Besides developing autonomous driving systems, Baidu has also produced electrically-powered robotaxi vehicles — without relying on a third-party manufacturer — that are 50% cheaper.

“Once we can generate profit for every single car in a second-tier city [like Wuhan] in mainland China, we can generate profits in lots of cities across the world,” Halton Niu, general manager for Apollo Go’s overseas business, told CNBC.

“Scale matters,” he said. “If you only deploy, for example, 100 to 200 cars in a single city, if you only cover a small area of the city, you can never become profitable.” 

How U.S. rivals stack up....

....MUCH MORE , hyperlinks in original

Only in China would a metropolis like Wuhan, population 11+million (est. up to 13mm+ for the metro area) be considered a second-tier city  

As noted in the outro from December 2024's "Beijing unveils plans to boost driverless vehicle use in capital": 

For folks who don't obsess about this stuff and read every bit and byte, a reminder that Baidu is Tesla's partner in Chinese robotaxis. If interested see some of the links in December 8's "There May Be Something To This Robotaxi Stuff: Uber And Lyft Got Spanked On Waymo Opening Florida Market (GOOG; UBER; LYFT; TSLA)" 

Years ago (2017) we were posting "Interview With CEO Robin Li on Baidu's (and China's) Goal Of Ruling Artificial Intelligence". 

May 2024 -  "Baidu Launches New $28,000 Robotaxi In Wuhan"

Although we had two posts on the subject I may not have emphasized enough how big an opportunity Elon Musk's deals with Baidu actually are. First, some background:

China has a communist government, they pick winners and losers in business, that's what communists do.

We first became aware of how important this understanding is in the case of the Chinese rare earth companies. Here's a snip from a 2009 post, "Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co., Ltd. UP 10% Wednesday (600111: Shanghai)", this is a couple years before the twenty-tweens rare earth mania....

August 2025 - "Lyft and Baidu plan Eurobocab launch, starting in UK and Germany next year"

"China’s Baidu says weekly robotaxi rides hit 250,000 — same as Alphabet’s Waymo this spring"

From CNBC, November 2:

• Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi unit said fully driverless weekly rides as of Oct. 31 have now surpassed 250,000 orders.
• Alphabet’s Waymo reported the same number of paid weekly robotaxi rides in the U.S. back in April.
• Apollo Go also said that so far its robotaxis have not been involved in a major accident involving human injury or death.

As Baidu amps up its robotaxi operations worldwide, fully driverless weekly rides as of Oct. 31 have now surpassed 250,000 orders, according to a spokesperson for the company’s driverless car unit Apollo Go.

That’s on par with what Waymo reported in late April for its weekly paid U.S. rides. When contacted by CNBC, Waymo did not have a new specific figure to share. The Alphabet-backed robotaxi operator primarily operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles in California and Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo partners with Uber in Austin and Atlanta.

The ramp up in Baidu’s robotaxi capabilities comes as Chinese and U.S. companies have been competing for leadership in advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, electric cars and autonomous driving.

It was not clear for how long Apollo Go has been operating 250,000 rides a week. For the quarter ended June 30, the company averaged about 169,000 rides a week based on CNBC calculations of the 2.2 million fully driverless robotaxi rides disclosed for the period.

Baidu’s Apollo Go primarily operates robotaxis in Wuhan and parts of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in mainland China. The company is also expanding to Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and, most recently, Switzerland. Robotaxis typically must undergo phases of public testing before local regulators allow companies to charge fares....

....MORE 

Related, May 2024:

"Baidu Launches New $28,000 Robotaxi In Wuhan"

Although we had two posts on the subject I may not have emphasized enough how big an opportunity Elon Musk's deals with Baidu actually are. First, some background:

China has a communist government, they pick winners and losers in business, that's what communists do.

We first became aware of how important this understanding is in the case of the Chinese rare earth companies. Here's a snip from a 2009 post, "Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co., Ltd. UP 10% Wednesday (600111: Shanghai)", this is a couple years before the twenty-tweens rare earth mania:

....China's moves to tighten control on the mining and export of a class of metal ores called rare earth are aimed at attracting high-tech manufacturing to Inner Mongolia, and not at dominating the market, a senior Chinese official said.

Wednesday's comments by Zhao Shuanglin, vice chairman of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, appear aimed at quelling concerns that China is trying to dominate the global market for rare-earth resources, used in some environmentally friendly technologies. Rare-earth metals greatly improve batteries made for hybrid cars....

...China also is taking steps to consolidate its rare-earth industry. Mr. Zhao, who said he runs the region's industrial policy, said Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare Earth Hi-Tech Co. would lead that consolidation. The move is aimed at creating a group of rare-earth miners and processors in the region's western parts. Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare Earth's stock rose 7.6% in Shanghai trading Wednesday.

"Most of the consolidation is complete," Mr. Zhao said. "We want to build Baotou into an international rare earth production base."....

By November 2010 the story was:
"Rare Earth: Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare Earth Hi Tech Co. Ltd. Reports 369% Increase in Q3 Net":

This is the big dog.
And one that the Chinese government says will be on top of the mandated industry consolidation.

IMBSREHTCL was chosen to succeed.

In the case of artificial intelligence it was apparent by 2017 that Baidu, known in the West as a search engine, was the anointed one for machine learning and such. Some of our headlines:

May 2015: Baidu Artificial Intelligence Beats Google, Microsoft In Image Recognition 

February 2017:"How Chinese Internet Giant Baidu Uses AI And Machine Learning"   

February 2017: "China is funding Baidu to take on the US in deep-learning research"

April 2017: "The Mobile Internet Is Over. Baidu Goes All In on AI"

September 2017: "China's Baidu launches $1.5 billion autonomous driving fund" 

December 2017: "Interview With CEO Robin Li on Baidu's (and China's) Goal Of Ruling Artificial Intelligence"

So yes, you could say Baidu is the Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare Earth Hi-Tech Co. of Chinese AI. Though it's quicker just to say Baidu....

"The economics of self-driving taxis" (GOOG; UBER)

You want economics? Here's a nasty person on the economics:

"When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes 
cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below 
the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

—Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, May 28, 2014

And from The Economist, September 28, 2025:

Waymo is a case study in automation 

AUTONOMOUS TAXIS are taking over San Francisco. Although Waymo, the world’s most famous robotaxi company, only launched there in 2023, it may now have more than a fifth of the city’s ride-share market (which includes Uber, but not traditional cabs). Wherever you look one of the company’s white Jaguars whooshes past. Tesla’s robotaxis have joined them, though with a supervisor in the driver’s seat. Before long Zoox, a driverless-car firm owned by Amazon, will set taxis free in the city.

San Francisco’s robotaxi boom raises a question: when technology automates a profession, what happens to human workers? You might think that the city’s drivers are doomed. In fact, so far, the rise of autonomy has played out in two different ways. First, it has raised overall demand for taxis in San Francisco, limiting job losses. Second, it caters to a lucrative corner of the market rather than to the masses.

Take the size of the market first. We find little evidence Waymo has put many humans out of work. According to official data, in 2024 the number of people in San Francisco working for “taxi and limousine service” firms grew by 7%, against a year earlier. Total pay in the industry rose by 14%. Figures from the city suggest the number of old-fashioned taxi trips is about the same as it was last year. It can still be hard to find a yellow cab at peak times. “As self-driving cars enter the marketplace, they will actually expand the market,” David Risher, chief executive of Lyft, a human-powered ride-hailing firm, recently suggested.

The extra riders come from different places. Waymo claims that some people visit San Francisco in order to ride their taxi, which would represent pure additional demand. More likely is that residents are using private cars less often. When the alternative was a Lyft or an Uber, people may have preferred to drive themselves. The risk of having to listen to bad music or engage in awkward conversation was too great. In a driverless taxi you can sit in silence. There are signs that San Franciscans are changing their behaviour. Spending on taxis appears to be growing especially quickly compared with that of residents of other cities. And since Waymo’s launch the number of private cars, adjusted for population, has fallen.

Autonomous taxis are nonetheless a long way from being a mass-market product. Waymos are comfortable and generally clean. But they are perhaps 20-40% more expensive than a Lyft or an Uber. They are also slow.

Unlike human-piloted taxis, autonomous ones rarely break traffic rules; you cannot tell a robot to “step on it!” They also get confused and stop in the middle of the street....

....MORE 

Back to Kalanick:

"We're at the very beginning stages of becoming a robotics company," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said at the Vanity Fair Summit in San Francisco in October. "As we move toward the future, autonomy is a pretty critical thing for us. It's existential."

-via c|net, Dec. 2016

Uber and former Googler Anthony Levandowski stole trade secrets from what became Waymo though to my knowledge they did not experience the promise and limitations of training the AI that Waymo did. From a 2017 post:

"When Google was training its self-driving car on the streets of Mountain View, California, the car rounded a corner and  encountered a woman in a wheelchair, waving a broom, chasing a duck. The car hadn’t encountered this before so it stopped and waited."

—Markets and Waterfowl: Machine Learning Is Only As Good As the Training It Receives

"Lyft and Baidu plan Eurobocab launch, starting in UK and Germany next year"

From The Register, August 5:

Using the Apollo vehicles that already offer autonomous rides across China 

Rideshare challenger Lyft and China’s Baidu plan to bring robo-cabs to the UK and Europe next year.

The two companies announced their plan on Monday, promising that if they can secure regulatory approval they’ll start offering robo-rides in the UK and Germany next year, using the same Baidu Apollo cabs already operating in China which Uber plans to use in the Middle East.

Lyft and Baidu expect their fleet will scale “to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the following years.”

The rideshare company seems not to be entirely wedded to Baidu, as its announcement describes the Chinese company’s cars as “its pioneering autonomous solution in the region,” suggesting other robo-cars could follow....

....MUCH MORE 

As noted in the outro from December 2024's "Beijing unveils plans to boost driverless vehicle use in capital": 

For folks who don't obsess about this stuff and read every bit and byte, a reminder that Baidu is Tesla's partner in Chinese robotaxis. If interested see some of the links in December 8's "There May Be Something To This Robotaxi Stuff: Uber And Lyft Got Spanked On Waymo Opening Florida Market (GOOG; UBER; LYFT; TSLA)" 

Years ago (2017) we were posting "Interview With CEO Robin Li on Baidu's (and China's) Goal Of Ruling Artificial Intelligence". 

"Uber in Talks With Its Founder, Travis Kalanick, to Fund Self-Driving Car Deal" UBER; PONY)

"When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes 
cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below 
the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

—Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, May 28, 2014

Warning to passers-by: I may be dipping into the archive as this deal progresses.* 

From the New York Times, June 26, 2025:

The ride-hailing company is in talks to help Mr. Kalanick, who was forced out in 2017, buy an autonomous vehicles start-up as the robot taxi service Waymo gains momentum. 

Uber is increasingly grappling with competition from self-driving taxi services like Waymo. Now the ride-hailing giant is taking more action to deal with that threat.

Uber is in talks with Travis Kalanick, the company’s co-founder who was forced out in a boardroom coup eight years ago this month, to help fund his acquisition of the U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese autonomous vehicle company, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The company, Pony.ai, was founded in Silicon Valley in 2016 but has its main presence in China, and has permits to operate robot taxis and trucks in the United States and China.

The talks are preliminary, said the people, who were not authorized to speak about the confidential conversations. Mr. Kalanick will run Pony if the deal is completed, they said. It is unclear what role, if any, Uber would take in Pony as an investor.

Financial details of the potential transaction could not be determined. Pony went public last year in the United States, raising $260 million in a share sale. Its market capitalization stands around $4.5 billion.

If the deal goes through, Mr. Kalanick, 48, will remain in his day job running CloudKitchens, a virtual restaurant start-up that he founded after leaving Uber in 2017. He would also work more closely with Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over as Uber’s chief executive after Mr. Kalanick’s ouster.

The discussions are the starkest sign yet that Uber is under pressure from Waymo, the driverless car unit spun out of Google, and other autonomous car services. This month, Tesla also unveiled a limited robot taxi service in Austin, Texas. Over time, these autonomous vehicle services may replace or eat into rides from human drivers. In cities like San Francisco, where robot taxi services are available, the vehicles have become ubiquitous and are popular.

An Uber spokesman declined to comment on deal talks and said, “Uber has a platform strategy, and we intend to work with multiple players in the U.S. and around the world who can safely bring autonomous technology to the world.”

Devon Spurgeon, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kalanick, did not immediately have a comment. Pony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When Mr. Kalanick was Uber’s chief executive, the company tried developing autonomous vehicle technology. It then bought Otto, a self-driving trucking start-up run by Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer. Google later sued Mr. Levandowski for theft of trade secrets and sued Uber to bar it from using its self-driving technology.

Under Mr. Khosrowshahi, Uber has taken a different tack to self-driving cars. The company has struck roughly 18 partnerships with autonomous vehicle companies like Wayve, May Mobility and WeRide to bring pilot programs for driverless car services into Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The goal, Mr. Khosrowshahi has said in podcast interviews, has been to put “as many cars on Uber’s network as possible.” He has maintained that while autonomous vehicles are growing steadily, ride-hailing networks will have both human and robot drivers for years.

Today, Uber both competes and collaborates with Waymo. In Phoenix, riders can order a Waymo car through Uber’s app. In Austin, Waymo’s robot taxis don the Uber logo. But Waymo has also expanded into more cities, potentially biting into Uber’s business. And in San Francisco, Waymo customers are required to use the Waymo app to order rides.

Uber is also watching Elon Musk, who has promised a wider rollout of Tesla’s self-driving taxis and has declined to team up with Uber.

Mr. Kalanick has grown interested in robotics over the past year, according to two people who have spoken with him. He has brought robots into some of his CloudKitchens to prepare food for customers and has experimented with automated kitchens building food bowls for delivery. He has also become enamored with robots that traverse streets to deliver food to people....

....MUCH MORE
*For example on the background between Uber and Waymo:

https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/search?q=Uber+Waymo 

Or alternatively, a broader search (it used to be much broader until Google began shrinking the internet by reducing the number of results they show on any given subject):

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Aclimateerinvest.blogspot.com+uber&ia=web 

Forced to use duck duck go because the GOOG won't do a site search. 

Of course we can go back to the GOOG - assisted site search:

https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/search?q=Uber

"Volkswagen's Autonomous ID Buzz Robotaxi Is Actually Real, And Cities And Companies Can Buy Them Soon"

 From Jalopnik, June 21:

After several years of testing, the Volkswagen Group via its software subsidiary MOIA has announced that the ID Buzz AD, the autonomous driving version of its all-electric update to the classic VW Bus, is going into full production. The AD version sports a longer wheelbase and a higher roofline than its mere human-driven sibling, which helps it to fit in the 13 cameras, nine LiDARs, and five radars that will (hopefully) allow the car to drive without crashing into anybody. These are intended for large-fleet customers providing taxi services, either ones run by local governments or private companies.

MOIA has already lined up its first customer, the German city of Hamburg, which will provide the automated Buzz as a public transit option alongside traditional bus and subway services. If all goes well, after Hamburg MOIA "will bring sustainable, autonomous mobility to large-scale deployment in Europe and the U.S.," according to VW Group CEO Oliver Blume. Down the road, VW has also signed an agreement for rideshare juggernaut Uber to use the ID Buzz AD across America, starting with Los Angeles in 2026.

The ID Buzz AD is the first vehicle in Germany to reach SAE International's threshold for Level 4 autonomous driving, meaning that the car can drive itself, with no need for a driver behind the wheel, within designated areas. This is the same level of autonomy as Google sister company Waymo provides for its Jaguar I-Pace fleet across the United States. Germany requires vehicles at this level to meet additional safety standards, such as with redundant braking and batteries, so presumably that extended wheelbase is helping fit some of that in.

....MUCH MORE

"Waymo reports 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in U.S." (GOOG)

Is that a lot? That seems like a lot.

From CNBC, April 24:

• Alphabet reported Thursday that Waymo, its autonomous vehicle unit, is now delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S.
• That figure is up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March.
• Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Waymo is building partnerships with ride-hailing app Uber, automakers and operations and maintenance businesses that tend to its vehicle fleets.

Alphabet reported Thursday that Waymo, its autonomous vehicle unit, is now delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S.

CEO Sundar Pichai said Waymo has options in terms of “business models across geographies,” and the robotaxi company is building partnerships with ride-hailing app Uber, automakers and operations and maintenance businesses that tend to its vehicle fleets.

“We can’t possibly do it all ourselves,” said Pichai on a call with analysts for Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings. 

Pichai noted that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is “future optionality around personal ownership” of vehicles equipped with Waymo’s self-driving technology. The company is also exploring the ways it can scale up its operations, he said.

The 250,000 paid rides per week are up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March. 

Waymo, which is part of Alphabet’s Other Bets segment, is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions....

....MUCH MORE

Thugs Destroy Waymo On Los Angeles Street

Looks pretty beat-up:

Is this bullish for $UBER and $LYFT? Waymo was destroyed in Los Angeles outside the Beverly Center last night. pic.twitter.com/XLFerpnK0t

— Dr_Silberschmelzer (@silberschmelzer) January 26, 2025

As noted in an October 2024 post:

It's Not Easy Being A Robotaxi In San Francisco

I hope someone is reminding Mr. Musk that very few places in the U.S. are like Singapore or Geneva.

Some recent headlines at the San Francisco Standard: 

September 26 - Waymo robotaxi vandalism spree filmed by gang on cellphones

October 1 - Viral video captures men trapping woman in Waymo

October 2 - Waymo bullying is suddenly a trend. Can the company stop it?

At least he got the social media company out of there:

October 4 - Undercover cops are shot at near former Twitter building