Waymo and Zoox race to expand robotaxis across US cities

Waymo and Amazon-owned Zoox are both racing to expand robotaxi service across US cities, Crypto Briefing reports.

• Waymo launched its Ojai-generation robotaxis for paying customers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix in late August
• The Alphabet subsidiary now runs roughly 500,000 paid rides a week across 11 US metro areas, an annualized rate of about 26 million trips
• Nevada issued Waymo a permit on August 20 to operate up to 1,000 vehicles in Clark County, with roughly 300 deployed so far and more planned by year-end
• Zoox received NHTSA approval on July 30 to deploy up to 2,500 steering-wheel-free robotaxis annually over two years, then launched paid service in Las Vegas on August 10 with about 65 vehicles
• Zoox plans to quadruple its San Francisco service area and expand into Austin and Miami

Nevada's August 20 permit is itself notable: it's a multi-operator framework that lets several companies run robotaxi fleets in the same jurisdiction at once, rather than granting one company exclusive rights over a market or region. That's part of why Waymo and Zoox can both expand in the state simultaneously instead of competing for a single license.

"Steering-wheel-free" is the detail that separates Zoox's approval from most of the industry. Waymo and most other robotaxi operators retrofit conventional cars with sensors and self-driving software, keeping a wheel and pedals as a fallback even when no human sits behind them. Zoox's vehicles were purpose-built without manual controls at all, so NHTSA's approval covers a design that has no steering wheel to hand control back to if the software fails.

Neither company has disclosed whether its robotaxi business is profitable, and both operate under the financial cover of a much larger parent: Alphabet backs Waymo, Amazon backs Zoox. That backing matters because robotaxi fleets are capital-intensive long before they generate meaningful revenue. Waymo's hardware strategy shows the scale of that investment. It recently built its own chip to cut its dependence on Nvidia hardware, a shift that only pays off at a scale where owning the chip design saves real money.

Tesla is the one major competitor neither company directly faces yet. It's developing autonomous ride-sharing built on its existing consumer vehicle fleet, using camera-based systems and over-the-air software updates rather than the purpose-built sensor suites Waymo and Zoox rely on. Whether that retrofit-style approach scales faster or slower than dedicated robotaxi fleets remains untested at the volume Waymo already operates at.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.