Driverless
Driverless news. Worldwide.
Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026
A Waymo Ojai robotaxi on a San Francisco street. File photo. Photo: Daniel Lu (dllu) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The City Council narrowly approved an ordinance Thursday that would require a licensed human safety monitor in the driver's seat of commercial driverless rideshares, a 7-6 vote that now goes to Mayor Jacob Frey, who has called the measure a backdoor ban.
Priya Nair, Safety · Oct. 1, 2026
The wire
Did you know the world's first large-profile driverless metro opened in France with full-size rubber-tyred trains and no platform screen doors?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Oct. 2, 2026
Did you know a German city took an ordinary crewed subway line that had carried passengers with drivers since 1984 and turned the whole route into a fully automatic, driverless metro without shutting service for the rebuild?
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Oct. 1, 2026
Did you know the French capital opened a brand-new metro line on 15 October 1998 with fully automated, driverless trains from the first passenger trip, complete with platform screen doors at every station?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 30, 2026
Did you know Denmark's capital opened a fully automated metro on 19 October 2002 with nobody in the driver's cab, and that those trains have run at Grade of Automation 4 ever since?
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 29, 2026
Dubai's transport authority has opened a proving ground for self-driving vehicles where, it says, Tesla and the Chinese robotaxi companies WeRide and Pony.ai have already run trials, as the emirate works to move autonomous cars out of pilot zones and into everyday traffic.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 29, 2026
Did you know London's Docklands Light Railway has carried passengers without a driver in the cab since it opened in 1987, with a seat at the front for anyone who wants the view?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 28, 2026
Elon Musk told a mobility conference in May that within a decade, driving your own car would be "quite a niche thing." Four months later, the clearest test of that forecast is playing out on streets like Austin's, where Waymo and Tesla robotaxis circulate with no one behind the wheel.
Analysis · By Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 27, 2026
Did you know Dubai opened a fully driverless metro at 9 minutes and 9 seconds past 9 pm on 9 September 2009, with nobody in a driver's seat from day one?
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 27, 2026
A Nissan SUV and a driverless Zoox robotaxi with no one aboard collided on the Las Vegas Strip on Friday morning, sending the SUV's driver to a hospital on the same day a state limit on the size of Zoox's Nevada fleet was set to expire.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 26, 2026
Did you know Metro Vancouver's SkyTrain has carried passengers without a driver in the cab since December 11, 1985, when the Expo Line opened as a showcase for Expo 86?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 25, 2026
Waymo has begun offering fully autonomous freeway rides in Austin to passengers who book through Uber, expanding a service that until now was limited to surface streets in the Texas capital.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 24, 2026
Did you know the world's first personal rapid transit system open to the general public started carrying passengers in Masdar City on November 28, 2010, months before Heathrow's airport pods welcomed the public?
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 24, 2026
Did you know Heathrow Terminal 5 has been moving Business Car Park passengers in small, battery-electric pods with nobody at a wheel since April 2011?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 23, 2026
Did you know Europe's first fully automated metro opened in northern France in 1983, with rubber-tired trains and nobody in a driver's seat?
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 21, 2026
Adarsh Premnath, FairPrice Group's manager for future mobility, published a LinkedIn Pulse white paper proposing a Singapore AV Passport as a cross-border certification benchmark built on explainability and public trust.
Kenji Watanabe, Asia desk · Sept. 21, 2026
Zurich Airport said two WeRide Robobus employee shuttles are now running fully automated on the airfield with no safety driver on board, monitored from a remote cockpit, after the first fully automated trips began in early September.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 21, 2026
Spotters say Tesla's Houston Robotaxi lot looked fuller than ever on Sept. 19, with validation Model Ys, validation Cybercabs, and at least roughly 70 Cybercabs packing the yard in what Robotaxi Radar described as more than a handful of test units staged for deployment.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 20, 2026
Waymo said its vehicles are now driving fully autonomously on Pittsburgh roads with a trained safety technician still in the driver's seat, a step beyond the manual mapping runs that began late last year.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 20, 2026
Did you know West Virginia University has been running driverless campus shuttles since 1975, years before the first public robotaxi and before Google even existed?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 20, 2026
Uber and Wayve began offering supervised autonomous rides in London in early September, matching paying passengers to Wayve-driven Mach-E vehicles with a licensed private hire driver still in every seat.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 20, 2026
Metro Trains Sydney has approval to run driverless trials with no supervisor on board on the Sydenham-Bankstown stretch, a month from the targeted Southwest Metro opening, the Herald reported.
Kenji Watanabe, Asia desk · Sept. 18, 2026
New York City DOT says Tesla's supervised Cybercab runs are Level 2 driver assistance, not Level 4 autonomy, so the company needs no AV testing permit, Gothamist reported.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 18, 2026
Did you know Kobe's Port Liner opened in 1981 as the world's first driverless urban transit system, more than two years before Lille's VAL metro?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 18, 2026
A Nevada Transportation Authority permit that capped Zoox at 100 robotaxis in the state expires Sept. 25, TechCrunch reported, opening room to grow the paid Las Vegas fleet.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 18, 2026
Alphabet's Waymo said it will bring fully autonomous, all-electric ride-hailing to Singapore in 2028, its first Southeast Asia market, after Jaguar I-PACE vehicles arrive for mapping and monsoon-readiness work.
Kenji Watanabe, Asia desk · Sept. 18, 2026
Hyundai Motor CEO Jose Muñoz said the automaker will mass-produce tens of thousands of Ioniq 5 robotaxis for Waymo at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia, with the first vehicles destined for more than testing due in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 17, 2026
Waymo has restarted paid robotaxi service in San Antonio five months after a flash flood swept an empty vehicle off the road, with software and map changes aimed at standing water, TechCrunch and local outlets reported.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 17, 2026
NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said the agency has signed a cooperative agreement with SAE to launch ASCEND, a consortium whose top priority is ADS competency standards that can become an FMVSS.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 17, 2026
Amazon-owned Zoox is pitching T-Mobile Arena as a full guest journey, pairing a dedicated West VIP robotaxi pickup zone with an in-arena Zoox bar, on a partnership announced in December 2025.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 17, 2026
Did you know the world's first fully driverless ride on public roads was taken by a passenger who could not see the road at all?
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 17, 2026
Lucid and Bolt said they will co-develop an ADS-ready Level 4 platform for Europe, with Bolt aiming to own and run at least 25,000 Lucid vehicles as a step toward 100,000 autonomous vehicles by 2035.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 17, 2026
Tesla China said Cybercab static displays in Beijing and Shanghai do not involve selling the vehicle or launching driverless ride-hailing in the country.
Li Wei, China desk · Sept. 17, 2026
Wayve named former Waymo chief financial officer Elisa de Martel as CFO, as the London startup moves from testing toward robotaxi and passenger-vehicle deployment.
Harper Quinn, Live desk · Sept. 16, 2026
Allianz Partners will handle fleet insurance, digital claims and safety research for Waymo's London and Munich expansion, the companies said.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 16, 2026
Pony.ai showed a Gen-4 Level 4 heavy truck on GAC Commercial Vehicle's T9 electric platform at IAA Transportation 2026, with autonomous-kit costs down 70% and volume production due later this year.
Noah Park, Freight · Sept. 16, 2026
Invited passengers can take fully driverless robotaxi test rides on public roads in Zagreb, the first such passenger service in Europe with nobody in the driver's seat.
Li Wei, China desk · Sept. 16, 2026
Alphabet’s Waymo, Japanese taxi-app operator GO, and taxi company Nihon Kotsu said they aim to launch Japan’s first fully autonomous commercial taxi service in Tokyo in 2027.
Kenji Watanabe, Asia desk · Sept. 15, 2026
A rain-slick Waymo clip paired with Elon Musk's old line that LiDAR scatters in precipitation is circulating again as Waymo opens in wet markets and Tesla posts its own storm videos.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 15, 2026
An audit query is a request. A Special Order is a legal demand. NHTSA has escalated its review of how Tesla certified a robotaxi with no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 15, 2026
Einride and Lidl have put the first cab-less SAE Level 4 autonomous truck into daily operations on a public road in Germany, under a first-of-its-kind permit from the Federal Motor Transport Authority.
Noah Park, Freight · Sept. 15, 2026
Motional said Monday that fully assembled IONIQ 5 robotaxis are arriving at its Las Vegas Technical Center straight from the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore, needing little more than Motional branding before autonomous ops prep.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 15, 2026
Daimler Truck said Torc aims to run a heavy truck on public U.S. roads with nobody in the cab before the end of 2026, then first commercial freight in 2027.
Noah Park, Freight · Sept. 14, 2026
Waymo has begun to open its robotaxi service to the public in Las Vegas, inviting riders on a rolling basis a few weeks after Nevada transportation regulators gave final approval.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 14, 2026
Spain's Directorate General of Traffic issued the country's first national Level 4 permit for passenger AVs, covering 20 WeRide GXR vehicles in Greater Madrid under the ES-AV framework.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 10, 2026
Customers in Austin can now book the two-seat, steering-wheel-free Cybercab in Tesla’s Robotaxi app. Texas lists 45 of the vehicles against a much larger Model Y robotaxi fleet.
Sam Okonkwo, Robotaxi · Sept. 4, 2026
The U.S. safety regulator is examining the process and technical data Tesla used to certify a robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, hours after commercial rides began in Austin.
Priya Nair, Safety · Sept. 4, 2026
DiDi Autonomous Driving opened fully driverless service trials of its R2 robotaxi, built with GAC Aion, for bookings in selected demonstration zones via the DiDi app.
Li Wei, China desk · Sept. 3, 2026