Two announcements in the first week of April framed the next phase of the robotaxi race. Waymo said it would launch in Nashville, its 11th U.S. city with driverless ride-hailing service. Tesla, meanwhile, said production of the Cybercab had begun at its Austin factory.
Taken together, the news shows a market split between a company scaling a live service and a company trying to turn a future vehicle platform into its next growth story.
Waymo grows from 100,000 to 500,000 weekly rides
Waymo now says it is completing 500,000 paid driverless trips each week, up from 100,000 in August 2024.
| Time | Paid trips per week |
|---|---|
| August 2024 | 100,000 |
| February 2025 | 200,000 |
| August 2025 | 250,000 |
| December 2025 | 450,000 |
| March 2026 | 500,000 |
These are fully driverless rides on public roads, without a human safety driver. Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana has said Waymo aims to pass 1 million weekly trips by the end of 2026.
Nashville also matters because Waymo is entering through Lyft. Riders will be able to request a Waymo vehicle directly inside the Lyft app, without installing a separate Waymo app or joining a waitlist. If that channel model spreads, Waymo can borrow Lyft's existing customer base and cut the cost of opening new markets.
Tesla puts the Cybercab at the center
Tesla's April message was that Cybercab production had started in Austin. At the same time, the company is winding down the Model S and Model X, two flagship lines that defined its luxury EV era for more than a decade.
The signal is clear: Tesla is moving its story away from premium electric cars and toward autonomous vehicles and Optimus humanoid robots.
Cybercab has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is designed from the ground up for autonomous driving, with a target price below $30,000. But putting it on the road still requires U.S. federal approval because the vehicle lacks standard controls, making the regulatory path new and uncertain.
Tesla's operating robotaxi service today still uses Model Y vehicles. It launched rides without a front-seat safety driver in Austin on January 22, but the service remains small and limited to specific areas.
Compared with Waymo, Tesla is behind on several fronts:
- Scale: Waymo is at 500,000 trips per week, while Tesla is still in the early stage.
- Cities: Waymo operates in 11 cities, while Tesla's commercial service is currently only in Austin.
- Regulation: Waymo has approvals for fully driverless operations in multiple states; Cybercab is still waiting for federal clearance.
- Data: Tesla has millions of vehicles on the road and far more driving data than Waymo, but turning that data into a safe driverless system is a separate challenge.
Tesla faces pressure beyond technology
Slow technical progress is not Tesla's only problem.
President Trump's 145% tariffs on Chinese goods are putting direct pressure on Tesla, with roughly a quarter of its U.S.-built vehicles exposed. After China announced retaliatory tariffs, Tesla stopped taking Model S and Model X orders in China.
Elon Musk's role leading DOGE has also triggered consumer backlash in parts of Europe and the United States. Protests at showrooms and vandalism against vehicles are problems Tesla had not previously faced at this scale.
Analysts argue that Tesla's share price has become detached from current fundamentals. Investors are paying for future technology rather than today's auto sales. Whether that case holds depends heavily on whether Cybercab reaches the road on schedule.
If the Cybercab timeline slips again and again, that would be a very, very bad outcome, one industry analyst said.
Two companies, two business models
The easy-to-miss point is that Waymo and Tesla are not chasing the same model.
Waymo is building an operator model: it buys the vehicles, runs the fleet, supplies the AI driver and sets the price. That consumes a lot of capital, but Waymo controls every car in the network.
Tesla wants a platform model: sell cars to owners, let owners authorize Tesla to put those cars into a robotaxi network when they are not using them, and split the revenue. If it works, Tesla's marginal cost is low because consumers bear the vehicle cost.
The platform pitch only works if FSD reaches truly unsupervised autonomy and federal rules allow a car without a steering wheel onto public roads.
The second half of 2026 should bring two key answers: can Waymo reach 1 million rides per week, and when can Tesla secure road approval for Cybercab? Those are the two milestones to watch in autonomous driving this year.
Sources: Waymo opens robotaxi service in Nashville, partners with Lyft (TechCrunch); Waymo's skyrocketing ridership in one chart (TechCrunch); The final days of the Tesla Model X and S are here. All bets are on the Cybercab. (TechCrunch); Tesla to begin Cybercab production in April, Musk claims (TechCrunch); Battered by tariffs and boycotts, CocoLoop; Tesla really needs a robotaxi launch (Fortune)