In the fight for who owns tomorrow’s means of moving humans around by car, Waymo and Tesla, Inc. (with company allies including Uber) are duking it out — and 2025 may go down as the year the fight went from boardroom to boulevard.
Waymo, borne of Google’s self-driving project, now reportedly runs 2,500 robotaxis across five U.S. cities — Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta.
The company just rolled out fully driverless service in Miami on November 18, 2025, removing in-car safety drivers altogether. With that move, Waymo stands as the only U.S. provider currently offering paid, fully-autonomous robotaxi rides to the public.
That all-electric, driver-free fleet exists in stark contrast to Tesla’s robotaxi rollout. Tesla’s program — launched in Austin in June 2025 under the name Tesla Robotaxi — still relies on human “safety monitors” riding shotgun. In July, the company quietly began offering its ride-hailing service in California’s Bay Area — yet regulations prevent it from calling the service a “robotaxi,” because driverless operation hasn’t been authorized.
But the regulation fight is real – as it should be. In California, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is in the process of drafting new autonomous-vehicle rules — and the battle lines are drawn. Tesla has publicly pushed back on a proposal championed by Waymo and Uber that would require ride-hailing operators to disclose detailed operational data: miles driven, disengagements, safety metrics, and more.
Tesla argues its system is “wholly distinct” from Waymo’s fully driverless model, suggesting that requiring data disclosure is unfair or inappropriate under current deployment modes. From the company’s side, this fight is about preserving flexibility — but many in regulatory and safety circles see it as obstructionism.
CEO Elon Musk recently said the Austin fleet will “roughly double” in December, aiming for rollouts in additional states including Arizona, Nevada and Florida before year-end. But even that modest growth looks puny compared with Waymo’s slow-and-steady build-out, which already has a live, fully driverless presence in multiple major metros.
The stakes feel especially high in my new town, Los Angeles, a city notorious for traffic, growing emissions, and ride-hailing saturation. Waymo’s electric, zero-tailpipe robotaxis seem tailor-made for this urban sprawl — and right now, they’re actually on the roads. Tesla, meanwhile, is battling regulators and public skepticism while racing to get enough cars on the streets before the year closes out.
This isn’t just a tech tussle over algorithms and sensors. It’s a full-blown regulatory cage match. One side — Waymo (with Uber backing) — wants transparency, safety data, clearly defined parameters and fully driverless fleets. The other — Tesla — wants to preserve flexibility, avoid stringent data disclosure, and scale fast under looser oversight.
One thing’s for certain – the era of the big yellow taxi is over.