Robotaxi rankings show Waymo lead, China's rise
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Waymo is the clear robotaxi leader, but if you thought Tesla and Zoox were close to catching up, think again — it's actually three Chinese companies, according to a new database shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: Autonomous vehicles are real, but it's still a hype- and headline-driven industry, so it can be hard to discern who's actually making progress toward commercialization.
Driving the news: The Road to Autonomy Indices, debuting Wednesday from AV research and advisory firm Autnmy AI, uses a proprietary AI algorithm to try to measure what's really happening amid all the noise.
- And among robotaxis, it finds that Baidu's Apollo Go, Pony.ai and WeRide are well ahead of Tesla and Zoox.
How it works: The rankings reward commercialization, not promises, using publicly disclosed information.
- The algorithm is heavily weighted toward fully autonomous operations generating revenue — not demos or pilots still operating with safety drivers.
- Six factors are scored on a scale of 0 to 100: autonomous operations, scale, revenue, commercial partnerships, manufacturing and safety transparency.
- The first three account for 70% of a company's composite score, and the closer to 100, the higher their ranking.
- There are separate indices for robotaxi companies, autonomous truck operators, AV licensing companies and robot delivery firms.
What they found: The narrative from AV companies doesn't always match reality.
- And AVs are a global industry: Three of the top five robotaxi players are Chinese.
Zoom in: "Chinese companies are scaling," said Grayson Brulte, who, along with former Cruise executive Rob Grant, cofounded Autnmy AI.
- "I don't really think it's well-recognized how far along the Chinese are in robotaxis," he said. "To me, it's a wake-up call."
State of play: Waymo's U.S. momentum earned the Alphabet unit the index's number one ranking. It's providing more than 500,000 paid robotaxi trips per week across 11 cities and its fleet currently stands at 3,500 vehicles.
- Apollo Go, Pony.ai and WeRide rank second, third and fourth, respectively, because of their growth outside the U.S.
- All are deploying paid robotaxi services in partnership with Uber, Lyft, Bolt and Grab across cities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
- Tesla, with fully driverless robotaxis in three cities — Austin, Houston and Dallas — ranks fifth, but regulatory restrictions are limiting CEO Elon Musk's ambitions for rapid scaling. (A new Texas database says Tesla has 69 registered robotaxis in the state, up from 42 two weeks ago.)
Among autonomous truck operators, Kodiak AI ranks first. Applied Intuition is the top AV licensing company and Starship Technologies ranks highest for delivery robots.
Go deeper: Details on the companies in each of the four indices are here.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that Waymo is providing more than 500,000 paid robotaxi trips per week (not 250,000), and has 3,500 vehicles in its fleet (not 1,500).
