Stuck in regulatory limbo, the self-driving-vehicle developer is encouraging residents of Washington, DC, to message public officials to help get its robotaxis onto roads. Waymo needs some help, according to an email message the self-driving developer sent to residents of Washington, DC, on Thursday. For more than a year, Waymo has been pushing city officials to pass new regulations allowing its robotaxis to operate in the district. So far, self-driving cars can test in the city with humans behind the wheel, but cannot operate in driver-free mode. The Alphabet subsidiary--and its lobbyists--have asked local lawmakers, including Mayor Muriel Bower and members of the city council, to create new rules allowing the tech to go truly driverless on its public roads.

Valve's Steam Machine: Everything we know Toyota and Pony.ai start mass producing robotaxis for China The first bZ4X robotaxi is ready to be deployed. It's the first of many, if the companies stick to their plan, which is to produce more than 1,000 bZ4X robotaxis this year. The bZ4X is one of the three autonomous vehicle models Pony.ai intends to use for commercial services in Tier 1 Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. The other two vehicles are already being used for Pony.ai's Pony.ai's goal is to operate 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2026.

Waymo, the US driverless car firm, said it hopes to be operating a robotaxi service in London as soon as September this year. The UK government has said it plans to change regulations in the second half of 2026 to enable driverless taxis to operate in the city but has not given a specific date. Waymo said a pilot service will launch in April and Local Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood said: We're supporting Waymo and other operators through our passenger pilots, and pro-innovation regulations to make self-driving cars a reality on British roads. The firm, which is owned by Google-parent Alphabet, showed off a fleet of cars it bought to the UK at London's Transport Museum on Wednesday. Waymo's vehicles are currently being operated by a safety driver, mapping the streets.

Is texting behind the wheel of a self-driving Tesla crazy? As self-driving cars get closer to reality, Tesla is striving to remain a big player. But is it sacrificing safety to stay in the game? For the past few weeks, Geoff Perlman, a 61-year-old technology executive from Texas, has been testing a free trial of Tesla's latest self-driving software as he travels around Austin. He's impressed: it can handle confusing lane adjustments and park itself in busy lots better, he thinks, than the average human.

A blackout in San Francisco revealed a new way for robotaxis to go wrong. Waymo's self-driving robotaxis can successfully nail a tricky left turn, weave through lanes to drop you off at the airport, and safely pass a U-Haul that's idling in the middle of the street. But during a blackout, they apparently turn into four-wheel bricks. On Saturday, when a major power outage in San Francisco knocked out traffic signals, many Waymo vehicles didn't pull over to the side of the road or seek out a parking space. Nor did they treat intersections as four-way stops, as a human would have. Instead, they just sat there with their hazard lights on, like a student driver freezing up before their big parallel-parking test.

A widespread power failure plunged San Francisco into darkness on Saturday night, disrupting traffic citywide and forcing numerous self-driving Waymo taxis to stop abruptly in the middle of streets and intersections. As electricity went out across large portions of the city, traffic signals failed, leaving autonomous vehicles unable to operate as normal. Photos and videos shared by users on X showed Waymo robotaxis frozen in place, backing up traffic and creating hazardous conditions for other drivers. Waymo confirmed on Saturday evening that it had shut down its driverless ride-hailing service throughout San Francisco after footage circulated online showing its vehicles blocking roads during the blackout. "We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage," Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion said in a statement to several news outlets.

The autonomous vehicle industry is heating up thanks to advances in AI. But can those same innovations help startups like HyprLabs build safe tech? For the last year and a half, two hacked white Tesla Model 3 sedans each loaded with five extra cameras and one palm-sized supercomputer have quietly cruised around San Francisco . In a city and era swarming with questions about the capabilities and limits of artificial intelligence, the startup behind the modified Teslas is trying to answer what amounts to a simple question: How quickly can a company build autonomous vehicle software today? The startup, which is making its activities public for the first time today, is called HyprLabs .

Alphabet's Waymo said on Wednesday that it would begin offering robotaxi rides that use freeways across San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, a first for the Google subsidiary as it steps up expansion amid global and domestic competition in the self-driving industry. Freeway rides will initially be available to early-access users, Waymo said. "When a freeway route is meaningfully faster, they can be matched with a freeway trip, providing quicker, smoother, and more efficient rides," it said. The race begins to make the world's best self-driving cars Waymo, which already operates in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, is also extending operations to San Jose, including Mineta San Jose international airport, the second airport in its service area after Phoenix Sky Harbor. The move comes as Tesla expands its robotaxi service with safety monitors and drivers, and Zoox - backed by Amazon - offers free robotaxi rides on and around the Las Vegas Strip.

Waymo's Robotaxis Can Now Use the Highway, Speeding Up Longer Trips The Alphabet company's self-driving cars are opening up shop in more and more cities. When Google's self-driving car project began testing in the Bay Area back in 2009, its engineers focused on highways by sending its sensor-laden vehicles cruising down Interstate 280, which runs the length of Silicon Valley's peninsula. More than 15 years later, the cars are back on the freeway--this time without drivers. On Tuesday, the project, now an Alphabet subsidiary we all know as Waymo, announced that its robotaxi service would now drive on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The new service marks another technical leap for Waymo, whose robotaxis currently serve five US metros: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has scored a resounding victory as shareholders have approved a pay package of as much as $878bn over the next decade, endorsing his vision of morphing the electric vehicle (EV) maker into an AI and robotics juggernaut. Shares of Tesla rose more than 3 percent in after-hours trading after the shareholders voted on Thursday. The proposal was approved with more than 75 percent support. "What we are about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book," he said. "This really is going to be quite the story."