Waymo targets $22M daily ride-hailing market and spotted in Hamburg.
Plus Zoox factory opening, Kodiak manufacturing partnership & Teslas robotaxi launch
👋 Welcome back to another week of autonomous vehicle developments that kept the industry on its toes.
This week brought us major production announcements, strategic positioning moves, and territorial expansion plays that signal the AV race is intensifying. From Hamburg to Las Vegas, from production lines to regulatory lobbying.
Let’s dive in
⏱️ ~2,100 words, 10 min read
🚗 Production, Expansion, and Strategic Chess Moves
Some weeks, events unfold at breakneck pace. This was one of those weeks. You could almost sense the industry players trying to outmaneuver each other at every turn.
UITP Summit Sets the Stage
The week began at the UITP Summit 2025 in Hamburg, where Moia unveiled their turnkey ID Buzz autonomous solution - a move that could fundamentally reshape the competitive landscape. Moia is offering a complete package: production-ready autonomous vans with 27 sensors (13 cameras, 9 LiDARs, 5 radars), full EU and US certification, and their AD MaaS platform that enables rapid deployment. This isn't just another prototype announcement - it's a direct challenge to the notion that only Silicon Valley can deliver at-scale autonomous solutions.
The strategic implications are significant. While Tesla promises Cybercabs by 2027 and others focus on proprietary fleets, Volkswagen is democratizing access to autonomous technology. Any municipality or company can now order a fleet without the massive R&D investment traditionally required. This could accelerate market fragmentation while lowering barriers to entry - potentially creating dozens of regional competitors overnight.
Hamburg's Mysterious Visitor
Then came the intrigue. Just outside the UITP venue in Hamburg, AV industry observer Alexander Kolbai spotted a Zeekr van in Waymo livery on June 18th. Notably absent from the conference's exhibitor list and equipped with mounting points for Waymo's sensor suite, though the sensors themselves weren't installed. The vehicle's license plate doesn't conform to German standards, suggesting it originated elsewhere in the EU.
Source: Mario Herger / Alexander Kolbai
This raises fascinating questions about Waymo's European strategy. Is Hamburg being positioned as their European beachhead? The timing - during a major transit conference in Germany's second-largest city - suggests this wasn't coincidental.
Waymo's Domestic Double-Down
Speaking of Waymo, they clearly weren't content to let others dominate the headlines. Just one week after temporarily suspending service following vehicle vandalism during Los Angeles protests, the company announced an 80-square-mile expansion across California, adding Brisbane, South San Francisco, Palo Alto, and several LA neighborhoods to their coverage area.
The numbers tell the expansion story: Waymo now covers 250+ square miles across California, operates 1,000+ vehicles in the Bay Area and LA combined, and serves over 250,000 paid trips weekly - five times their volume from June 2024. This isn't gradual scaling; it's aggressive market capture during a critical window.
But the real bombshell came with Waymo's New York City announcement. The company applied for permits to test with safety drivers in Manhattan, as New York state law currently prohibits autonomous vehicles from operating without human oversight. Simultaneously, they're actively lobbying state legislators to amend regulations for fully autonomous operations.
However, according to Grayson Brulte from the Road to Autonomy Podcast, Senate Bill S344 would need to pass to allow fully autonomous vehicles. With the New York Legislative Session having ended, the earliest this could happen is when the session reconvenes in January 2026. Even if passed, the law would take effect 90 days after the Governor's signature - meaning fully autonomous operations couldn't begin until mid-2026 at the earliest.
The stakes couldn't be higher. NYC represents one of the world's largest ride-hailing markets, processing 658,465 ride-hail trips daily as of April 2025. Uber dominates with 71% market share, while Lyft captures the remaining 29%. With an average fare of $33.42, this translates to approximately $22 million in daily revenue.
Source: toddwschneider.com
The city's unique challenges - from aggressive drivers and double-parked cars to construction zones and pedestrian chaos - have historically made it a no-go zone for autonomous vehicles. Previous attempts by companies like Cruise were quickly abandoned.
mentioned another hurdle in his newsletter: NYC’s strong labor support for taxi operators and ridehail drivers. He expects to see a lot of pushback there. (Highly recommend checking out his take as well)Yet those same characteristics make NYC the ultimate validation market. Success here would demonstrate autonomous technology's readiness for any urban environment globally.
The economic implications are compelling:
Waymo currently serves 250,000 paid trips weekly across all four operational markets combined. Even capturing 10% of NYC's ride-hailing market would represent approximately 461,000 weekly paid trips - nearly doubling their current volume. At NYC's average fare of $33.42, this would generate $15.4 million in weekly revenue. Factoring in Waymo's premium pricing as highlighted in last week’s newsletter (30% above Uber, 41% above Lyft), the revenue potential increases further.
However, 10% market share appears conservative. In San Francisco, Waymo's most mature market, they've achieved over 20% market share. Should NYC match this penetration, the numbers double again to 922,000 weekly trips, generating $30.8 million in revenue.
I would assume that NYC's ride-hailing market appears at saturation, meaning Waymo's entry would primarily cannibalize existing Uber and Lyft market share rather than expand the overall market.
The market's reaction was swift and predictable: Uber fell 2.9% and Lyft dropped 3.8% on the news.
Zoox Emerges from the Shadows
Meanwhile, Amazon's Zoox - long criticized for its opaque commercial strategy - made a long-term move by opening its first full-scale production facility in Hayward, California. The facility can produce 10,000 robotaxis annually, with commercial service launching in Las Vegas this year.
The production ramp: starting at just one vehicle per day, Zoox plans to scale to 5,000 annually next year before reaching full 10,000-unit capacity. Their rollout strategy: Las Vegas launches later this year, followed by San Francisco, then Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, and Atlanta in subsequent phases.
However, the gap between headlines and reality remains stark. Despite media coverage positioning Zoox as "Waymo's new competitor," the fundamental difference is execution: Zoox currently has no vehicles on the road taking paying passengers, while Waymo serves over 250,000 paid trips weekly. The manufacturing announcement, while significant for future scaling, doesn't address this commercial deployment gap.
Zoox may have impressive production plans, but until they demonstrate consistent, service with paying customers, they remain in the development phase while competitors capture actual market share.
Manufacturing Partnerships Drive Scale
But Zoox isn't the only company making manufacturing moves this week. In the autonomous trucking space, Kodiak Robotics announced a contract manufacturing partnership with Roush Industries to scale production of their Kodiak Driver-equipped trucks. Starting in H2 2025, Roush will upfit trucks at their Livonia, Michigan facility, beginning with vehicles for customer Atlas Energy Solutions.
As one of the autonomous vehicle companies still operating without a direct OEM partnership, Kodiak has built their business around retrofitting existing trucks with autonomous technology. The Roush deal represents a crucial step in scaling this retrofit model beyond limited production capabilities. Roush's 50-year track record in vehicle upfitting and modification provides Kodiak with the manufacturing infrastructure they need to meet growing customer demand.
This manufacturing scalability through Roush could prove essential for Kodiak to capitalize on early market momentum.
My take: Expansion and scaling have become the dominant themes in the AV industry. Waymo's NYC push faces significant regulatory hurdles, but the economic data suggests the effort could be extraordinarily rewarding if successful. Meanwhile, Zoox desperately needs to transition from manufacturing announcements to actual paid passenger services - their promised Las Vegas launch later this year will be a critical test of whether they can execute operationally. One thing's certain: the pace of development ensures this industry won't be boring anytime soon.
🔗 Bloomberg (1) / Bloomberg (2) / TechCrunch (1) / TechCrunch (2) / The Verge / Mario Herger / WSJ / Inside EVs / Harry Campbell / Todd W Schneider / Forbes / Road to Autonomy / Kodiak
🚗 Tesla’s Robotaxi launch
At the time of writing this newsletter, there was no comprehensive coverage of how Tesla's robotaxi launch actually performed. However, there were already clear indications of what the launch would look like - and it wasn't quite what Elon Musk had promised.
Tesla announced to its invite-only passengers that it would operate a limited service with Tesla employees on board the vehicle to maintain safety. Tesla decided to use the Yandex approach, putting the safety driver in the passenger seat rather than the driver's seat.
Having a safety driver on board is the standard procedure that all other robotaxi players have used when starting operations. Most companies have spent years - Waymo spent a decade - testing with safety drivers before removing them.
But why safety driver on the passenger side?
There is no safety value to putting the driver on the passenger side. The only logical explanation is optics - Tesla can state their vehicles have "nobody in the driver's seat" to impress the public while maintaining human oversight.
Tesla will also implement other restrictions:
Limited operating hours: 6 AM to midnight (notably opposite to Cruise's initial night-only operations when traffic complexity is lower)
Invite-only passenger list: Standard practice for Waymo, Cruise, and others in their early days
Restricted service area: Avoiding complex and difficult streets and intersections
Weather restrictions: No service during inclement weather, as Tesla FSD disables itself when rain obscures cameras
Small fleet size: 10-20 vehicles
Tesla could have delayed the launch. A small group of Texas lawmakers requested Tesla postpone operations until new Texas regulations take effect in September. Some observers felt this offered Tesla an easy escape from their self-created deadline, allowing them to blame regulators for the delay.
Instead, Musk pushed forward. After driverless Tesla Model Ys were spotted on Austin streets Sunday morning, he posted on X that the "robotaxi launch" would start that afternoon with rides for a flat fee of $4.20.
The timeline for Tesla's safety driver phase remains completely unclear - it could last weeks, years, or indefinitely given their current hardware limitations. The fundamental uncertainty is whether Tesla implemented human oversight as a brief stopgap to meet their self-imposed deadline, or if this marks the start of an extended development cycle similar to other industry players.
Given Tesla's well-documented history of missing FSD deployment targets, this latest delay fits an established pattern. However, the more significant question centers on whether Tesla's vision-only sensor strategy and accelerated development approach can ultimately deliver genuine autonomous capability.
It remains fascinating to watch this unfold. I'm looking forward to reading the coverage of the launch in the coming days and will share my thoughts with you here.
💡 Quick Takes:
🛡️Applied Intuition Raises $600M at $15B Valuation
The autonomous vehicle software company closed a massive funding round co-led by BlackRock and Kleiner Perkins, more than doubling their valuation from $6B just one year ago. Beyond traditional AV applications, they're expanding into defense, recently helping the U.S. Army autonomously retrofit an infantry vehicle in just 10 days. This positions them as the "picks and shovels" play in the AV gold rush.
🔗 TechCrunch
📱 Seoul Expands Late-Night Robotaxi Service in Gangnam
Seoul is extending its autonomous taxi pilot deeper into Gangnam district, now covering most of the area between 11 PM and 5 AM. With 4,200 completed trips and zero accidents since September 2023, the program demonstrates autonomous vehicles can operate safely in high-density Asian urban environments - a crucial validation for global expansion strategies.
🚘 Pony.ai Unveils Gen-7 Robotaxi at 2025 HK Auto Expo
The Chinese startup revealed its seventh-generation system built on Toyota bZ4X platform, featuring 34 sensors and 1,016 TOPS computing power. More importantly, they've achieved 70% cost reduction in autonomous driving kits while maintaining automotive-grade components.
🌏 Baidu's Apollo Go Eyes Southeast Asian Expansion
Apollo Go is reportedly planning to launch services in Singapore and Malaysia by end of 2025, according to a source familiar with the matter. Apollo Go is in talks with potential partners to explore business models suitable for these two markets, the source said. This marks the next announced expansion after Dubai and Abu Dhabi in March, Hong Kong in April and Switzerland last month.
📚 Worth Reading
Waymo+Uber Market Dynamics as Tesla Enters
’s great analysis on market dynamics in the Robotaxi market.
📊 Weekly Performance
Note: Stock performance data as of June 22, 2025. Past performance does not indicate future returns.
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