Uber and Waymo are rolling out Robotaxi services in Atlanta as competition heats up at Alon Musk’s Tesla

Waymo’s unmanned march to Atlanta will come in a few days Tesla It was finally released Austin’s limited robotaxi services, More than five years after CEO Elon Musk embarrassingly promised that electric car makers would quickly overtake Waymo as a leader in autonomous driving technology. Unlike Waymo’s Robotaxis, Tesla initially places a person in the passenger seat of a rival service and takes over the vehicle if something goes wrong.

Tesla starts with around 12 monitored Robotaxis, but Waymo and Uber have dispatched around 100 fully driverless vehicles in Austin within four months of the partnership’s launch. With the expansion to Atlanta, both companies will remain on the roadmap They laid out last September.

As in Austin’s case, Atlanta’s Waymo’s Robotaxis is dispatched through the Uber app. Uber offers customers the option to request a human-controlled vehicle if they don’t want to ride a driverless ride. Robotaxis initially covers a 65-square miles (168,00 square kilometers) area within the Atlanta market and expands to larger stretches.

Waymo’s own riding app is available in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and is steadily expanding in the San Francisco Gulf region. Considering its partnership with Uber, Waymo currently offers over 250,000 paid rides per week. This is the early frontline of the Robotaxi market, which is still born.

However, Musk Tesla’s Robotaxis service grows quickly, Amazon is ready The company plans to expand its Zoox driverless cab to San Francisco next year, in order to bring it to Las Vegas later this year. Zoox also aims to bring the Robotaxi service to Atlanta, but has yet to set a target date.

Uber once had the ambition to build Robotaxis, but later reversed the course A mocking legal battle On Waymo, where the ride company claims to have stole autonomous technology after poaching one of the engineers. After reaching $245 million settlement Along with Waymo, Uber eventually sold its self-driving vehicle division after a crash in 2018 that killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.

Uber then pivoted into the Robotaxi partnership and remained competitive as driverless cabs restructured the riding market. “By integrating Waymo’s cutting-edge technology into the Uber platform, we continue to make transportation more convenient, sustainable and reliable,” said Sarfraz Mayedia, who oversees Uber’s efforts in autonomous driving.

and 18 different Robotaxi partnerships Around the world, Uber says it’s a pace to transport passengers, deliver food, or take unmanned trips of around 1.5 million people.