Tesla has late start in a crucial race for its future | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Robotaxis are coming to a city street near you, whether you like it or not.

According to recent surveys, the majority of Americans are not very fond of autonomous 4,000-pound vehicles ambling down their streets.

“Consumers are skeptical of the full self-driving (FSD) technology that undergirds the robotaxi proposition, with 60% considering Tesla’s full self-driving ‘unsafe,’ 77% unwilling to utilize full self-driving technology, and a substantial share (48%) believing full self-driving should be illegal,” according to the May 2025 edition of the Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report (EVIR).

But not every robotaxi is operated by Tesla.

Even though it’s the most high-profile robotaxi operator, Tesla is actually late to the autonomous-driving party.

There are companies, both in America and abroad, with millions of miles and thousands of hours under their belts.

Waymo leads the robotaxi pack

When Ford CEO Jim Farley recently said that U.S. tech companies passed on becoming carmakers, he was not technically correct.

While they don’t plan to enter the industry in a way that would be threatening to a company like Ford, Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Waymo is the Silicon Valley giant’s biggest bite at the apple.

Waymo One users register over a quarter of a million paid weekly trips across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, with plans to expand to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Waymo’s current fleet features over 1,500 vehicles spread across its four current host cities, but by next year, it expects to more than double its fleet with more than 2,000 new additions.

The company is relying on a new, 239,000-square-foot factory outside Phoenix in Mesa, Arizona, to integrate thousands of Jaguar I-PACE vehicles with Waymo’s fully autonomous technology. The factory is a joint venture between Waymo and mobile tech company Magna International.

Zoox’s bidirectional robotaxis could soon be in a lot more cities.

Image source&colon; Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Amazon sends a bold message about its robotaxi ambitions

Amazon acquired the autonomous vehicle company Zoox in 2020.

And for over a decade, Zoox has been building an autonomous vehicle designed to stand out from others on the road.

There’s a reason the rectangular glass-paneled Zoox robotaxi looks so weird. Besides the vehicles’ lack of steering wheels, perhaps the most interesting Zoox feature is its two-engine design.

Zoox calls its vehicles bidirectional, meaning there is no forward or reverse, because both directions are forward. The two motors at different ends of the car allow it to drive forward in two directions.

Unlike Tesla (TSLA) , which has said it doesn’t use the technology because it’s too expensive, both Waymo and Zoox utilize light detection and ranging (LiDAR) to navigate traffic autonomously.

LiDAR uses lasers to measure distances and create highly detailed 3D models of its surroundings. Zoox uses this tech, along with cameras, radar, long-wave infrared sensors, and microphones, to map the traffic around it.

Morgan Stanley says Zoox is still a couple of years behind Waymo, as Waymo is already in more than five cities, while Zoox is still in just two.

But Morgan Stanley sees the company taking a similar route as its more established rival as production ramps up for the company.

Currently, Zoox has only a few dozen purpose-built robotaxis on the road, and the Hayward facility produces only one vehicle per day. Still, the firm expects that number to increase exponentially as it expands to more cities.

Zoox has over one million miles driven in company.

Morgan Stanley expects Zoox to launch in Las Vegas and San Francisco by the end of the year.

Tesla robotaxi has rough opening week in Austin debut

Tesla robotaxi launched in Austin, Texas, in late June, to much fanfare.

Tesla has just 10 robotaxis on the street in Austin. It also has ambitions to expand to different locales, but its debut has gotten off to a rocky start.

Multiple videos have appeared on social media showing the vehicles failing to achieve the basic road competence of a student driver.

Tesla Robotaxi may not have the miles under its belt that its competition does, but it does have a scale advantage.

Earlier this year, Tesla said that its FSD system has driven a cumulative total of 3.6 billion miles, nearly triple the 1.3 billion cumulative miles it reported a year ago.