AV Market Update CW19
Waymo Personal Autonomous Vehicle, Aurora's Driverless Truck Launch & Uber's Two New AV Partnerships
👋 Hello!
This week marks a watershed moment for autonomous vehicles with industry-defining announcements across multiple fronts. Waymo and Toyota are exploring bringing L4 autonomy to consumer vehicles, potentially shifting the industry from service-only to ownership models.
Meanwhile, Aurora has crossed the commercial threshold by launching the first driverless trucking service on public roads, proving that autonomous freight is no longer just a concept but a revenue-generating reality.
2025 is truly becoming the inflection point for autonomous driving that many have long anticipated.
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🚗 Waymo and Toyota Explore Partnership to Bring Autonomy to Consumer Vehicles
A significant shift in the autonomous vehicle industry emerged this week as Waymo, the undisputed leader in autonomous driving technology, and Toyota, one of the world's most efficient auto manufacturers, announced a preliminary agreement to explore developing an autonomous vehicle platform together.
While light on specific details, this exploratory partnership carries profound implications for the entire mobility ecosystem and signals a potential strategic pivot for Waymo beyond its robotaxi business.
The timing of this announcement is particularly notable, coming just days after Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai hinted during the company's earnings call that Waymo was looking at "future optionality around personal ownership."
With this Toyota partnership, we now see what that strategic vision might entail: bringing Waymo's advanced L4 autonomous technology directly to consumers through next-generation Toyota vehicles while simultaneously developing a new robotaxi platform.
This potential shift addresses a criticism that Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently leveled during his earnings call when he joked that Waymo costs "way-mo money." The Toyota partnership could dramatically change that equation by lowering costs through shared platform development and unlocking a new licensing revenue stream for Waymo beyond its own operated fleets.
For Toyota, this represents an opportunity to leap ahead in autonomous capabilities while hedging their bets – the Japanese automaker maintains parallel partnerships with Aurora and May Mobility, which uses Toyota Siennas in their operations.
The idea of AV companies producing consumer vehicles isn't new, but the path to market has historically favored the robotaxi approach. There's a fundamental reason why companies like Waymo started with robotaxis rather than personally owned autonomous vehicles: it's simply more feasible from a deployment perspective.
To sell a autonomous consumer vehicle, it must function effectively everywhere – you can't market a vehicle that only operates in specific neighborhoods in a few cities. By contrast, a robotaxi service can be successful by serving just a few lucrative areas in major urban centers.
This approach has served Waymo well. The company now operates in five locations with several more planned, delivering an impressive 250,000 rides per week. Their success is backed by compelling safety data recently published in a study accepted by the Traffic Injury Prevention Journal.
Source: Waymo
Compared to human benchmarks over 56.7 million miles, the Waymo Driver showed remarkable safety improvements: 92% fewer crashes involving pedestrians, 82% fewer crashes involving cyclists and motorcyclists, 96% fewer injury-causing intersection crashes, and 85% fewer crashes resulting in serious injuries.
With this established track record, Waymo maybe think their ready to explore the consumer vehicle market with Toyota, the world's top-selling automaker. But for now, this is still future music.
The transition to consumer vehicles still faces significant hurdles. Self-driving technology requires at the moment extensive infrastructure, regular software updates, connectivity, mapping, and potentially remote assistance capabilities – making it more of a service than a traditional product a consumer just buys.
This service-oriented nature of autonomous technology creates an interesting dynamic in the mobility ecosystem.
While personally owned autonomous vehicles might eventually reduce the need for ride-hailing services, the complex infrastructure and ongoing support requirements mean that established mobility platforms could play a crucial role in the transition.
For ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft, this development presents a fascinating paradox.
In the near term, Waymo licensing its technology rather than restricting it to its own fleet reduces the risk of Waymo becoming a closed-loop competitor. Moreover, the partnership could accelerate cost reductions in vehicle production and autonomous systems that would benefit the entire ecosystem.
However, in the long-term it could be an existential threat for rideshare. If your personally-owned autonomous vehicle can pick you up after a night out, drive you to the airport while you sleep, why would you need a rideshare service?
The widespread adoption of personally-owned autonomous vehicles could potentially eliminate the traditional rideshare business model. Fortunately for Uber and Lyft this is probably years away. It will take some time before the costs drop and capabilities improve sufficiently to make mass adoption feasible.
Meanwhile, this announcement creates immediate competitive pressure on other automakers to forge their own autonomous vehicle partnerships, potentially further fragmenting the AV ecosystem.
This fragmentation is what you want when you’re the platform orchestrating the AV market. So this could actually benefit rideshare platforms short to mid-term by preserving a broader array of suppliers and technology partners rather than concentrating power in a few closed systems.
Uber's partnership team seems to recognize this opportunity – just this week they announced not one but two new autonomous vehicle partnerships.
The first is a multi-year strategic partnership with May Mobility to deploy thousands of autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform in the next few years.
The partnership will begin in Arlington, Texas by the end of 2025, where May Mobility has been operating since 2021, before expanding to additional U.S. markets in 2026. The first deployment will launch with onboard safety operators before transitioning to driverless.
And guess which vehicle platform they'll be using? You guessed it – Toyota!
May Mobility will provide a fleet of American-made, hybrid-electric Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicles equipped with their patented Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology. The emphasis on "American-made" in the May Mobility announcement seems particularly savvy given the current geopolitical climate and ongoing discussions about tariffs.
Just a day after the May Mobility announcement, Uber revealed another significant partnership with Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. This deal will bring Momenta's robotaxis to the Uber platform starting in Europe in early 2026, initially with safety operators onboard. While Momenta currently operates autonomous systems in China, this partnership will focus on markets outside the US and China. The vehicle platform remains undisclosed. Could that be the next partnership for Volkswagen’s ID Buzz AD?
These latest partnership announcements from Uber come on the heels of several other autonomous vehicle integration deals, highlighting the company's aggressive strategy to remain the dominant mobility platform regardless of who develops the underlying technology.
Looking ahead to the remainder of 2025, we can expect to see a flurry of similar partnership announcements as the autonomous vehicle industry reaches an inflection point.
The competition to secure strategic positions in the emerging autonomous ecosystem is intensifying, with major players from both the technology and automotive sectors scrambling to align with complementary partners.
This year is shaping up to be pivotal for autonomous driving technology, with more AV companies making concrete progress toward removing human safety operators from their vehicles. The pressure to form alliances is intensifying as companies race to achieve scale and market penetration before competitors.
For established OEMs who haven't yet secured strong autonomous partnerships, the Waymo-Toyota announcement creates additional urgency to find technology partners or risk being left behind.
Despite the limited details in the Waymo-Toyota announcement, its significance cannot be overstated. It represents a potential watershed moment for autonomous vehicles – shifting from a service-only model to one where consumers might eventually own vehicles with advanced autonomy capabilities, fundamentally reshaping the transportation landscape for decades to come.
I'm excited to see how these developments unfold through the remainder of 2025 and beyond as we approach true inflection points in both technology capability and market adoption.
🔗 TechCrunch (1) / TechCrunch (2) / Bloomberg (1) / Bloomberg (2) /LinkedIN / Uber / Forbes / Waymo / LightShed Research
🚛 Aurora Launches Commercial Driverless Trucking Service
In another groundbreaking development this week, Aurora Innovation has officially launched its commercial self-driving trucking service in Texas, becoming the first company to deploy fully driverless heavy-duty trucks for commercial use on public roads in the United States. Aurora's autonomous Class 8 trucks are now making customer deliveries between Dallas and Houston without anyone behind the wheel.
The achievement represents a major milestone in the autonomous vehicle industry, particularly in the freight sector where the economic and safety benefits could be substantial. Aurora has reportedly completed over 1,200 miles of driverless operations so far, with plans to expand service to El Paso and Phoenix by the end of 2025.
Source: Aurora
Aurora CEO Chris Urmson, who rode in the backseat during the inaugural trip, called it "the honor of a lifetime" and noted that "the Aurora Driver performed perfectly." This commercial launch comes right on schedule, meeting the April 2025 deadline the company had announced last October after a previous delay.
The launch customers for this service include Hirschbach Motor Lines and Uber Freight, both of which have been conducting supervised commercial pilots with Aurora for several years. For Uber Freight, this represents a significant achievement in their autonomous strategy. "Moving autonomous commercial freight without anyone behind the wheel is a historic step forward in our mission to build a smarter and more efficient supply chain," said Lior Ron, Founder and CEO of Uber Freight.
Prior to launching driverless operations, the company completed its safety case, an essential process that assembles evidence to demonstrate that the product is acceptably safe for public roads. Aurora also released a Driverless Safety Report detailing its operating domain, approach to cybersecurity, remote assistance protocols, and other safety-critical aspects.
While Aurora's achievement marks a significant milestone, the company still faces challenges on the path to scaled deployment. Currently, Aurora owns, maintains, and insures its fleet of autonomous trucks for customers, but the longer-term plan involves working with manufacturing partners to develop self-driving trucks for high-volume production. Aurora expects customers to begin purchasing these purpose-built autonomous trucks directly from manufacturers starting in 2027 or earlier.
But the economic rationale for autonomous trucking is compelling. The industry faces an aging driver population with high turnover rates, rising operating costs, and underutilized assets. Self-driving technology promises to address these challenges by enabling 24/7 operations (compared to the 11-hour daily limit for human drivers), improving reliability, and enhancing safety on highways where approximately 4,000 people die each year in the U.S. in truck-related crashes.
Aurora has now taken the first step, but the autonomous trucking industry continues to heat up with several competitors close behind. Companies like Bot Auto, Waabi, and Gatik have all announced plans for their own driverless operations later this year, signaling a race to commercialization across the sector.
But even for Aurora, this launch represents just the beginning of a longer journey. After this initial milestone, many more steps will follow. Aurora plans to expand its operational footprint to El Paso and Phoenix, while also developing capabilities for night driving and rainy conditions in the second half of 2025.
These enhancements would dramatically improve asset utilization and operational efficiency, addressing one of the key economic advantages of autonomous trucking over traditional human-driven transport, which is limited by hours-of-service regulations.
But the autonomy market is moving fast. Looking further down the timeline, Aurora has the following plan for the coming years:
Source: Aurora
In its most recent financial report, the company disclosed a net loss of $748 million for 2024 (down from $796 million the previous year). The funding of $1.2bn should take Aurora until late 2026.
Source: Aurora
While the loss decreased, Aurora needs to demonstrate a path to profitability as it scales operations. The company is set to report its first-quarter earnings on May 8th, which should provide more details about how this commercial launch impacts their financial outlook.
The autonomous trucking market is clearly approaching an inflection point in 2025. Aurora's commercial launch has already generated positive investor sentiment that will likely benefit Kodiak Robotics, which is currently in the process of going public via SPAC.
Meanwhile, Plus recently conducted its own driver-out demonstration on a closed track as they prepare for their planned 2027 commercial launch. With Bot Auto also expected to join the driver-out club later this year, there's tremendous momentum building in the sector. For investors who have been watching from the sidelines, these developments are prompting renewed interest in exploring the massive potential of the trucking market
Aurora's milestone represents not just a significant achievement for the company, but a pivotal moment for the entire autonomous vehicle industry – demonstrating that self-driving technology has matured to the point where it can safely handle one of the most challenging transportation tasks: operating heavy commercial vehicles at highway speeds without human supervision.
🔗 TechCrunch / The Verge / Aurora (1) / Aurora (2) / Forbes (1) / Forbes (2) / Forbes (3) / Road to Autonomy
💡 Quick Takes:
🔄 Hyundai and Plus Unveil Autonomous Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck Vision
Hyundai Motor Company and Plus have presented their shared vision for autonomous hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo 2025. The collaboration pairs Hyundai's XCIENT Fuel Cell truck with Plus's AI-based autonomous driving software, SuperDrive™, proposing a scalable solution for sustainable long-haul freight.
🔗 Hyundai
🚘 Abu Dhabi Expands RoboTaxi Trials with 2026 Launch Target
Abu Dhabi's Integrated Transport Centre has expanded its autonomous RoboTaxi service in partnership with Autogo and Baidu's Apollo Go. The trials feature sixth-generation RoboTaxi vehicles (RT6) with electric design and AI-powered systems, positioning the emirate for a full-scale launch of driverless taxis by 2026. This initiative represents a strategic push toward smart, efficient transport solutions that support Abu Dhabi's digital transformation goals and enhance urban mobility.
🔗 Gulf Business
🔬 ARX Robotics Secures €31M for Autonomous Defense Vehicles
German defense startup ARX Robotics has raised €31 million ($35.2 million) in a funding round led by HV Capital, with participation from Omnes Capital and NATO's €1 billion Innovation Fund. The Munich-based company, which makes self-driving modular battlefield robots, will use the funding to establish a production facility in southwest England with a planned investment of £45 million ($59.9 million) over three years. The facility aims to produce 1,800 vehicles annually, significantly scaling up from their current production capabilities.
🔗 Bloomberg
🚚 Plus Completes Driverless Truck Validation Tests
Plus has successfully completed validation tests of its SuperDrive autonomous trucking software with no person in the truck. Testing occurred on a closed track at the Transportation Research Center in Ohio using an International Truck, demonstrating the system's ability to handle complex driving decisions and fallback safety procedures without human intervention.
🔗 Forbes
🇨🇳 WeRide Receives Driverless Testing Licenses in Guangzhou
WeRide has received Guangzhou Nansha District's first batch of driverless road testing licenses for its Robovan W5 autonomous logistics vehicle. This milestone follows the district's introduction of trial safety guidelines for autonomous vehicle road testing in Q1 2025. The Robovan W5, designed for urban freight applications, offers 5.5m³ cargo capacity, a 220km driving range, and supports multi-vehicle fleet management, positioning WeRide to accelerate large-scale commercialization of autonomous logistics vehicles.
🔗 WeRide
📚 Worth Reading
New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer for those most at risk
The study, which analyzed 56.7 million miles of driving data, found that the Waymo Driver achieved 92% fewer crashes involving pedestrians, 82% fewer crashes involving cyclists and motorcyclists, 96% fewer injury-involving intersection crashes, and 85% fewer crashes with suspected serious or worse injuries compared to human benchmarks. This growing body of evidence supports the real-world safety benefits of autonomous driving technology, particularly for vulnerable road users.
🔗 Waymo
📊 Weekly Performance
Note: Stock performance data as of May 04, 2025. Past performance does not indicate future returns.
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