Waymo robotaxis make more than 250,000 trips a week

The Google sister company Waymo quickly expands its robotaxi business before new rivals like Elon Musk come into business. The self-driving cars now make more than 250,000 trips with paying passengers per week, said Google boss Sundar Pichai. Waymo only cracked the 200,000 trips at the end of February.

Since then, Waymo has started on the platform of the Driving Service mediator Uber in Austin and expanded San Francisco’s service into Silicon Valley. In the coming year, the driverless cars are scheduled to come onto the street in the capital Washington.

Pichai brought cars with Waymos Software for autonomous driving for the first time as a possibility for the future as a possibility for the future. One focused on developing « the best driver in the world ».

Competitors in the starting blocks

It was only on Thursday that Volkswagen announced that it will bring self-driving cars on US roads from 2026 to self-driving cars. Musk said this week that Tesla wanted to start his own robotaxi service in Austin Texas at the end of June-initially with 10 to 20 cars of the compact SUV Model Y. He always claims that most of the new Tesla vehicles already had everything necessary to be autonomous.

That is why Musk speaks of millions of self -driving Teslas – and a market share of more than 90 percent in the robotaxi market. He also announced that autonomous driving should be activated for private Tesla owners in several US cities by the end of the year.

Doubts about Musk’s great promise

The Tesla boss has been announcing this for years – but so far the vehicles « autopilot » have only have as an assistance system in which people at the wheel must always be willing to intervene. Industry observers and competitors see Musks great promises skeptical. Because this only wants to rely on cameras and do without the more expensive laser radars used by Waymo.

Waymos vehicles significantly expensive the technology – and also makes it more difficult for the Google sister company to operate profitably. But the laser radars feel the surroundings and thus provide the software for autonomous driving significantly more and more reliable information than cameras.

Meanwhile, the US transport security authority is planning to loosen the information obligation for manufacturers in the event of accidents with driving assistance systems. This could benefit Tesla with the « Autopilot » system.

At the NHTSA, several investigations are underway for “autopilot” accidents. According to media reports, the authority was also affected by personnel cuts in the course of Musk’s savings campaigns in the US government. President Donald Trump had assured several times that there would be no conflicts of interest in the activities of the Tech billionaire.