Autonomy: A Long Road For Short Trips

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Back in 2002, DARPA announced its first Grand Challenge, a driverless car competition with a $1 million prize that sent eager university engineering teams to build driverless cars to compete in a 150-mile race through the Mojave Desert.

Twenty-one teams had to navigate a qualifying challenge, a mile-long obstacle course at California Speedway. Seven teams successfully finished the course, while eight others completed enough to satisfy the judges, resulting in fifteen vehicles making it to the final race in 2004.

In that first year of the race, not a single vehicle finished the route, and DARPA’s $1 million prize went unclaimed.

Fast forward to 2025, and autonomous vehicles are not only real, driving by themselves, sharing our city streets, but they are now part of our cultural and comedy zeitgeist.

The latest expansion to Grand Theft Auto Online includes robotaxis from a fictional company dubbed “KnoWay,” whose sole purpose appears to be wreaking havoc for other drivers in the game.

David Letterman told a series of Waymo-related jokes on the Jimmy Kimmel Show this week, recounting his experience being surrounded by Waymos while in a regular human-driven taxi heading from LAX to downtown Los Angeles. The talk show host said, “I put down my window, and I’m looking right in there at nobody. And I believe that this was an expression of joy expressed in vulgarity. And I just as I leaned out and as loud as I could I said, "Hey, fuck you, Waymo.”

Waymo executed over 14 million trips so far in 2025, now servicing 450,000 weekly paid customers, more than tripling their public rides from last year.

Waymo plans to expand its ride-hailing operations to over 20 additional cities in 2026.

Drawing from Uber and taxi-driver lore, a pregnant woman en route to a UCSF medical center gave birth inside a Waymo just last week.

While Waymo might be the largest operational robotaxi fleet on the planet, plenty of other self-driving vehicles are hitting the roads, intensifying competition in autonomous vehicle technology.

Tesla is preparing to remove their safety drivers from their Austin robotaxi fleet by the end of the year. (What could go wrong?)

Amazon’s Zoox announced in November that it plans to launch its robotaxi service in San Francisco, offering free rides in parts of the city as it accelerates its attempt to challenge Waymo.

Uber has partnered with Waymo, WeRide, Avride, Baidu, and Pony.ai to offer robotaxi services in cities in different parts of the world via its app.

In addition to its collection of partnerships, Uber also plans to build its own fleet of robotaxis in collaboration with VW, Nvidia, Stellantis, Lucid, and Nuro. Uber aims to deploy at least 20,000 Lucid vehicles and 5,000 Stellantis vehicles over the next five to six years.

Other companies are working to either improve their advanced drive assist systems or sell you a self-driving vehicle of your very own.

Tesla wants to get you behind the wheel of its Cybercab (if it ends up having a wheel).

Tensor thinks it can beat Tesla to the punch. They expect to begin selling ground-up Level 4 autonomous vehicles to customers by January 2027 (that’s only thirteen-ish months away).

Texas start-up Zevo plans to buy a fleet of Tensor vehicles and operate them as a robotaxi service in Dallas. (Did I mention that Tensor has never built a car?)

Late to the self-driving party, Rivian announced this week that it is building its own extremely powerful AI chips for autonomous driving. They also announced several future autonomous features they hope will enable it to sell Level 4 autonomous vehicles to customers.

Can your car’s AI chip do 1,600 trillion operations a second? Oh, wait, it doesn’t have a purpose-built AI chip? Maybe you’re gonna want to get one.

Although it appears the self-driving future that DARPA hoped would emerge is now here, autonomous vehicles account for a negligible share of total driving and a tiny percentage of wheels on the streets.

And not everyone is convinced that flooding the roads with autonomous vehicles is even a good idea.

The irony is that all of these companies have taken decades, driven millions of test miles, and spent billions of dollars building tech to enable cars to drive themselves, so you can get in one of these robo-vehicle things to ride for an average of about 5 or 6 kilometres.

A distance you could walk for free in about 45 to 60 minutes.

That’s an awfully long road for a handful of short trips.

VW and Xpeng’s first joint venture vehicle, the ID.Unyx 07 is set to begin production on December 31st. carnewschina.com

The first Ford Bronco EV rolled off the production line in China. carnewschina.com

Geely opened the world’s biggest automotive safety testing center, highlighting the country’s push to play a greater role in setting global vehicle standards. autonews.com

China's commerce ministry said negotiations with the EU over a minimum price plan for China-made electric vehicles have restarted. reuters.com

Mexico plans to impose 50% tariffs on Chinese cars. autonews.com

China’s auto production and sales topped 31 million vehicles in the first eleven months of the year, rising more than 10% from a year earlier. technode.com

One of Tesla’s Optimus robots collapsed at a Miami event after the bot’s human operator removed his headset before logging out. forbes.com

Tesla is pulling all of the discount levers for its annual end-of-year push in the US. This is the first full quarter in recent years that Tesla will not have the federal EV tax credit to help with demand and affordability. insideevs.com

DHL has taken delivery of its first Tesla Semi and has undertaken a two-week trial covering almost 5,000 km in the machine. thedriven.io

SpaceX quietly installs a Starlink vending machine in Iowa. pcmag.com

SpaceX appears to be gearing up for a significant push into the mobile carrier market, filing a trademark for “Starlink Mobile.” teslanorth.com

In Canada, SpaceX’s cellular Starlink is moving out of beta and officially launching as a paid service through Rogers Wireless. pcmag.com

New robot smaller than a grain of salt can “sense, think and act.” washingtonpost.com

Ukrainian military personnel can order drones or ground robots on the Blockchain Defence website. It’s similar to Amazon. They order directly from the manufacturer, and they get delivered directly to the military unit on the battlefield. breakingdefense.com

Posha uses AI and a motorized arm to cook your dinner autonomously. theverge.com

Venezuela is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with an estimated 304 billion barrels in the ground. Ed Conway explains The Donald’s obsession with the country. youtube.com

The oil market is grappling with whether sanctioned Russian and Iranian cargoes should still be counted as supply. This may explain why oil prices have been slow to react to a huge glut building in the ocean. There are 1.4 billion barrels of oil “on the water.” That is 24% higher than the average for this time of year over 2016-2024. wsj.com

Most investment banks and the EIA forecast that average oil prices will fall below $60 per barrel in 2026 due to an emerging and persistent market oversupply. The oversupply is primarily driven by weak global demand growth and rising supply from both OPEC+ and non-OPEC+ producers. oilprice.com

Ford and SK On are ending their US battery joint venture. techcrunch.com

Stellantis plans to sell an all-electric small “car” called the Fiat Topolino in the US. The announcement comes less than a week after The Donald’s remarks, praising small “Kei” cars from Japan. cnbc.com

Ford taps Renault for help building cheap EVs in the EU. theverge.com

The 2026 Kia EV4 will be the cheapest EV in Canada when it goes on sale. autonews.com

GM Canada will pay six months’ salary to 1,000 laid-off employees at the CAMI Assembly Plant. autonews.com

GM Canada names Jack Uppal as its next president. autonews.com

Canadian dealers and auto groups have spent millions on charging infrastructure and store upgrades to get ready to sell and service EVs, but for some, the return on investment isn’t there yet. autonews.com

The European Commission on Tuesday will propose rule changes that reverse previous plans for an effective ban on selling new cars with combustion engines in the 27-nation bloc from 2035. reuters.com

Ionna, the DC fast-charging network backed by several automakers, aims to double the number of chargers installed in the US by the end of the year. Currently, Ionna has 51 locations, with 478 charging ports online. By December 31st, or at the latest during the first weeks of next year, they expect to have 100 sites and 1,000 ports up and running. insideevs.com

NASA and USPS stop using vehicles from defunct EV start-up Canoo. techcrunch.com

Segway’s new e-bike looks like a regular bike and includes millimetre wave rear-facing radar for its vehicle detection and warning system. theverge.com

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