AI / TECH
Waymo at 500,000 Weekly Rides, Tesla Cybercab... The Autonomous Driving War Has Truly Begun
Waymo is expanding its robotaxi service footprint to 14 U.S. cities, recording about 500,000 paid weekly rides. Tesla has deployed the Cybercab in Austin, though the scale of actual paid and driverless operations among the 420 registered vehicles in Texas must be viewed separately. Baidu, Pony.ai, and WeRide are expanding their businesses into the Middle East and Europe, with Apollo Go's cumulative rides exceeding 23 million. Recalls of 3,871 Waymo vehicles and 105 Zoox vehicles show that handling edge cases is becoming a new competitive edge in large-scale autonomous driving services. Based in Gwangju with a 200-vehicle demonstration and unmanned vehicle safety guidelines, South Korea is pushing to implement Level 4 autonomy by 2027, but the gap in commercialization scale with the U.S. and China remains wide.
Where Global Autonomous Driving Stands: Waymo's 500,000 Weekly Rides, Tesla's Cybercab, and Chinese Robotaxis Expanding Overseas Robotaxi and Level 3 Commercialization Map as of September 10, 2026 — Fleet Operations, Regulations, and Economic Competitiveness Added to Technology Competition As of September 2026, the autonomous driving industry is no longer confined to the stage of verifying whether technology can operate on real roads. Waymo is providing approximately 500,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the United States, and as of September, has increased the number of cities where it operates or is gradually opening paid ride services to 14. Chinese autonomous driving companies are expanding their business areas into overseas markets such as the Middle East and Europe, and Tesla has begun deploying the Cybercab—a dedicated robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals—into actual ride…
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