By Chris Kirkham, Norihiko Shirouzu and Rachael Levy
(Reuters) -A month after Tesla launched a trial robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June for select fans, CEO Elon Musk told investors that the company’s driverless taxis would likely be available to “half the population of the U.S.” by the end of this year.
Alphabet’s Waymo – the U.S. leader in autonomous ride-hailing – launched a similar test service in Phoenix more than eight years ago. Today, it operates in areas with about 3% of the U.S. population.
Musk’s pronouncements about expanding Tesla’s robotaxis at a “hyper-exponential rate” stand in contrast to Waymo’s deliberate approach ahead of entering new markets.
Musk sees a faster path to scaling the business because of Tesla’s reliance on just cameras and artificial intelligence, compared with Waymo’s rules-based AI approach that uses more sensors and high-definition mapping. The differing strategies have far-reaching implications for the early pecking order in the nascent autonomous-driving space, which some analysts and investors say could become a multitrillion-dollar market over the next 15 years.
Waymo’s expansion playbook involves comprehensively mapping new cities, and phasing in autonomous ride-hailing after testing the technology with drivers in the front seat and employees as passengers.
Tesla says its robotaxis use a different autonomous technology from Waymo’s, one that allows it to bypass much of that painstaking prep work. The cars – still in the testing phase – use AI that reacts to road conditions the way a human would. Tesla says that requires less-extensive road testing and mapping.
“Once we can make it basically work in a few cities in America, we can make it work anywhere in America,” Musk told analysts on a conference call in April. He has called Waymo’s approach “fragile,” saying its ability to expand is “limited.”
Many investors have bought in to Musk’s vision. Some analysts attribute the vast majority of Tesla’s stock-market value to autonomous driving capabilities that investors are betting can reach scale much faster than Waymo’s efforts. If successful in a rapid commercial expansion, the robotaxi business could solidify a new growth engine for Tesla.
Reuters interviewed a dozen current and former industry executives, regulators, law-enforcement officials and city planners to contrast Tesla’s early expansion efforts with those of Waymo, revealing sharp contrasts in their technical and go-to-market strategies.
Current and former Waymo executives say their market-by-market approach of mapping and testing before expansion is essential to ensuring safety, helping factor in the peculiarities of each city’s roads – for example, steep inclines in San Francisco that make it difficult to see what’s ahead.
“We really need to understand the core ingredients of each of these cities,” said Aman Nalavade, a Waymo product manager, in an interview with Reuters. “There is a lot of risk in doing this incorrectly.”
Musk has also talked about the importance of safety. “We don’t want to take any chances, and so we are going to go cautiously,” he said last month.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
CONTRASTING TECH
Tesla and Waymo both use AI in autonomous driving. But Waymo’s technology involves more of a step-by-step process, where its system takes in data from high-definition maps and advanced sensors to recognize objects and plan the vehicle’s path.
Tesla, by contrast, says its system makes driving decisions more like a human. The company has said it uses an AI method where video captured by the vehicle’s cameras is interpreted by software and instantly translated into driving decisions, without the intermediate steps used by Waymo.
Waymo has experimented with aspects of Tesla’s approach but said in a research paper last year that there are “challenges and limitations” with its performance.
Musk has set an ambitious timeline of having “millions of Teslas operating autonomously” by the second half of next year, which compares with Waymo’s roughly 2,000-vehicle fleet currently. After launching the pilot program in Texas in June, Tesla is awaiting approval in Arizona and looking to expand to states including Nevada and Florida.
The pressure is on for Tesla to deliver on those promises, because its core electric-vehicle business faces headwinds. Its vehicle sales have declined globally, including a sharp drop in Europe. Falling behind Musk’s robotaxi timeline would delay a key new revenue stream.
Waymo is the only company in the United States offering a paid, fully autonomous ride-hailing service open to anyone. It operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, along with parts of Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta.
Before expanding into a new market, Waymo fine-tunes its technology through testing in virtual simulators, on a closed 113-acre California course and on city streets where it plans to launch.
In Phoenix, it started offering test rides with a driver in the front seat more than three years before opening paid, driverless ride-hailing to the general public in 2020. It took nearly four years until Waymo opened up autonomous service any time at Phoenix’s airport terminals, in August 2024.
Waymo says it is reducing the testing time in new cities as its autonomous technology gains more experience and applies previous lessons to new geographies.
Paul Miller, an analyst at market research firm Forrester, said Waymo’s approach is safer and more realistic in the short term, while Tesla’s approach is a riskier bet but a “far cheaper approach to scale globally.”
Bank of America analysts estimate Waymo lost between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion last year. But analysts expect that Waymo’s model will eventually be profitable as vehicle costs come down and ridership grows.
Morningstar analysts projected in a March report that Waymo would have a “rapid ramp-up period” over the next few years while Tesla would have a “slower initial robotaxi rollout,” because its software “will not be ready.” Morningstar expects Tesla to launch fully autonomous robotaxis by 2028 and surpass Waymo’s ride-hailing market share by the end of the decade.
‘A HUGE CONCERN’
Even with Waymo’s meticulous approach to studying new markets, it has encountered problems and rankled some city officials.
In Austin, where it started offering autonomous rides through the Uber app in March, authorities have often seen Waymo vehicles ignore officers’ hand signals and drive into dangerous situations, said Austin Police Lieutenant William White.
In May, a Waymo vehicle drove into flood waters and the passenger had to find a way out. “Obviously that’s a huge concern to us,” said White. “If that person had died, we could have been looking at a serious criminal incident.”
Last year, during a charity walk near downtown Austin, a Waymo vehicle tried repeatedly to go around an officer who was clearly blocking a roadway. Police eventually disabled the vehicle by wrapping tape around one of its sensors, White said.
Austin police have had to create a new system of traffic citations to handle repeated instances where Waymo vehicles froze and blocked traffic, White said. Police have issued three citations to Waymo since March. Officers have said the process for citing a driverless vehicle is so time-consuming that they often avoid it.
“If they decided to pursue it every time, we would be talking about hundreds of citations by now,” White said.
The department has had limited interactions with Tesla’s robotaxi service so far because it is just getting started.
Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli said the company has had “robust engagement” with Austin police and fire officials for more than two years. Waymo takes “all observations and concerns seriously” and uses that feedback “to improve the performance of our technology,” he said.
SOOTHING SKEPTICS
Beyond technical challenges, autonomous-vehicle firms must navigate a patchwork of regulations while also reassuring community leaders who might be apprehensive about driverless vehicles.
For example, Waymo started meeting with local officials more than a year before its March launch and attended city-organized meetings with representatives of the Texas School for the Deaf, among other local organizations. School representatives took demo rides in Waymo vehicles ahead of the launch.
School superintendent Peter Bailey said he briefly met representatives from Tesla a few months before Tesla’s June launch, and learned about the timing from news reports. The day of the launch, a Reuters reporter observed a Tesla robotaxi speeding between 40 and 45 mph in a 35 mph zone near the school, where a sign warned drivers to watch for deaf pedestrians.
Bailey declined to comment on Waymo and Tesla’s approaches to community outreach. He said he expects “all drivers, including autonomous vehicles, to follow posted speed limits and operate with caution around school zones.”
Differing regulations around the country can also bog down expansion plans, Waymo’s experience shows. The company targeted a 2026 launch in Washington, D.C., for example, but it is not clear the city will pass needed regulations in time.
The D.C. city council has been waiting years for a report from the city’s transportation department on recommendations for commercial driverless-vehicle rules before moving ahead. While the regulations may be ready by the end of 2026, there is no timeline for passage, said councilmember Charles Allen.
Waymo has hired three outside lobbying firms and is circulating online petitions urging residents to “help bring Waymo to DC!”
D.C.’s Department of Transportation said Tesla has not reached out.
(Reporting by Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles, Norihiko Shirouzu in Austin, Texas; and Rachael Levy in Washington; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy in San FranciscoEditing by Mike Colias and Matthew Lewis)
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