autonomous vehicles

Zoox to begin offering robotaxi rides to public in San Francisco

Zoox is starting to open its robotaxis to the public in San Francisco as the Amazon-owned company creeps towards a commercial service and direct competition with Waymo. Zoox robotaxis — custom-built vehicles that lack a steering wheel or pedals — have been rolling around San Francisco streets for nearly a year. But until now, only

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Teradar raises $150M for a sensor it says beats lidar and radar

Matt Carey, the co-founder and CEO of Boston-based startup Teradar loves when people tell him: “I don’t believe you.” That’s “right where we want folks,” he recently told TechCrunch. Carey has spent the last few years quietly building a solid-state sensor that sees the world using the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum, which sits

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Glīd is building an autonomous shortcut to move freight from road to rail — catch it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Kevin Damoa came face-to-face with the challenges and dangers of moving freight from road to rail as a 17-year-old U.S. Army enlistee tasked with loading tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles onto the railroad. It was — as the mechanical engineer and founder of Glīd Technologies puts it — the beginning of his love story with

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Waymo’s co-CEO on the challenge of scaling robotaxis safely

Waymo’s co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, had a clear message during her interview on the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 stage Monday: “It is imperative that we scale.” Mawakana was speaking in the context of how Waymo balances fundraising (and burning through that money) with eventually achieving profitability. But she was also clear in the interview that she believes

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Waymo co-CEO on robotaxi vandalism: ‘We’re not standing for it’

Waymo is currently the robotaxi leader in the United States, and that status has put the company’s vehicles in the crosshairs of vandals multiple times over the last year — most recently this past weekend in Los Angeles. On the sidelines of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said vandalism against Waymo’s robotaxis is “not

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Robotaxi companies must do more to prove safety, Waymo co-CEO says

Waymo co-CEO Takedra Mawakana believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe, she said during an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. Mawakana had just been asked who she considered to be on the list of companies trying to make roads safer during Monday’s interview. “I don’t

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Regulators probe Waymo after its robotaxi drove around a stopped school bus

A Waymo robotaxi was recently spotted driving around a school bus with its red lights flashing, and federal safety regulators have opened an investigation as a result. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Monday morning that its Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened an investigation after seeing footage from early October of a

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Stellantis teams up with Pony.ai to develop robotaxis in Europe 

Automaker Stellantis and Chinese autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai have signed a non-binding agreement to build robotaxis for deployment in Europe.   The collaboration will integrate Pony’s self-driving software into Stellantis’s electric medium-size van platform, which is built with advanced sensors to support autonomous vehicles. The companies plan to first deploy test vehicles based on the

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