Robotaxis arrived years late and still lose money
Forecasters once expected driverless taxis to be widespread by 2018. That never happened. By 2025 services run by companies such as Waymo, Baidu, Pony.ai and Zoox were spreading quickly, yet every one still operated at a loss, and an American Automobile Association survey found that just 13% of people asked were willing to trust a car that drives itself.
A robotaxi is a car able to drive itself under SAE level 4 or 5 automation, run by a ride-hailing firm. The race to launch was frantic. In August 2016 Uber announced a public autonomous fleet in Pittsburgh, and a week later the startup NuTonomy surprise-launched an invitation-only service in part of Singapore. Uber went live that September with 14 cars, handing riders a human-driven or self-driving car at random. Both kept safety drivers in front.
Waymo began large tests around Phoenix in 2017 and charged paying riders from December 2018. In China, Baidu and Pony.ai received the country's first permits to run without safety drivers in April 2022, inside a 23 square mile zone of Beijing. In August 2023 California let Cruise and Waymo charge fares for fully driverless rides in San Francisco at any hour, and Waymo's area later grew to the whole Bay Area.
The machines are costly. Early vehicles were estimated in 2020 at up to $400,000 each, and Waymo put its cost at about $180,000 in 2021, though lidar prices have fallen. Tesla plans a camera-only purpose-built car, the Cybercab, for 2026. All services remain limited to mapped zones.
Problems persist. In 2023 some robotaxis blocked roads after losing mobile signal and others failed to yield to emergency vehicles. A 2018 Uber test car killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, while its safety driver was watching videos. Economists also disagree on whether cheap driverless rides would ease congestion or create more traffic.
Source: Robotaxi
