In the article Robotaxis Get a Boost from Ride-Hailing Platforms published last September, I analyzed how these platforms, Uber in particular, are becoming lynchpins within the robotaxi ecosystem. Since then, the momentum has continued to increase. The deployment of robotaxis — and to a lesser extent autonomous shuttles — has accelerated, particularly in the U.S. and China. More announcements have been made by autonomous driving system (ADS) providers, ride-hailing operators, OEMs, as well as fleet managers and orchestrators, for future service. Europe has been a major focus area for these announcements although the Middle East and Japan are accelerating as well.

 

How will these stakeholders combine their expertise to form robust value propositions? Will they play interchangeable roles within their specific domain? Will one of the stakeholder groups (vehicle, ADS, ride-hailing, etc.) reap an oversized share of the revenue and profit? Are certain players within these groups positioned to play a leading role in this growing business?

 

 

The State of AV Deployment Around the World

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been deployed at some scale in the U.S. and China, and to a much lesser extent in the UAE. In the U.S., Waymo remains by far the leader operating commercially without safety operators. As of last December, the Alphabet company had driven 170 million rider-only miles. Its fleet of over 3,000 robotaxis now carries passengers in eleven cities of which six were added in 2026 and has access to four airports. A dozen more cities have been announced for future deployment. Waymo recently reached 500,000 paid rides per week, a 2x growth since April 2025, and now operates on highways at speed up to 65 mph (105 km/h). Waymo has partnered with Jaguar, Zeekr, and Hyundai for the base vehicles, and with Uber and Lyft for some of its deployment.

 

Zoox, an Amazon subsidiary, offers free rides thanks to a fleet of a few dozen custom-built, four-seat vehicles with no steering wheels, pedals, or safety operators. In Las Vegas, it has delivered over 350,000 rides with fixed pick up and drop off point. In San Francisco, the service is accessible to select riders (I am lucky to be one of them) on a growing but still limited operating design domain. Whereas the company is still offering free rides, it has announced future deployment in several U.S. cities. Tesla remains confined in Austin and San Francisco despite extremely ambitious projections made by Musk last year. Its fleet of a few hundred Model Ys operate commercially with safety operators onboard except for some of its vehicles in Austin. Both Zoox and Tesla have developed their own ADS and vehicles and operate the service. By the way, I have seen a Tesla Cybercab on the freeway near San Francisco, however it was fitted with a steering wheel.

 

In China, robotaxis and shuttles have been deployed commercially without safety operators in a dozen cities. They are essentially operated by Baidu’s Apollo Go, Pony.ai, and WeRide. Apollo Go’s fleet of over 1,000 robotaxis reached 300,000 paid rides in a week in Q4 2025. Pony.ai is accelerating, aiming to scale its fleet from 1,000 to 3,000 vehicles during 2026. With over 1,000 vehicles, WeRide is the only player operating both robotaxis and autonomous shuttles, a “Robobus” co-developed with bus-maker Yutong. Conversely, all robotaxis are sourced from local OEMs such as Geely or foreign JVs (GAC Toyota for Pony.ai). 

 

In Europe, AV deployments have been limited to pilots to date, using shuttles essentially. Yet, many announcements of new partnerships related to both robotaxis and shuttles have been made over the past two years, particularly in the last 12 months. Europe has clearly become the new battleground while Chinese ADS providers have taken the lead so far. Autonomous ride-hailing is coming: Rimac’s Verne, Pony.ai, and Uber just announced that they started to offer such a service in Zagreb, Croatia — with safety operators. 

 

The UK will likely be to the first major market to experience robotaxis later this year as the necessary regulation is being finalized. Waymo is preparing to launch the service itself in London whereas Apollo Go and Wayve collaborate with Uber and Lyft. The soon-to-be-voted-on U.N. World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (or UNECE WP.29) will certainly accelerate the deployment of AVs across the EU. Indeed, it will create a unified type approval process whereas deployment in the U.S. is hindered by a patchwork of state-specific regulations.

 

Finally, the Middle East and Japan are building momentum as well. Autonomous ride-hailing is already offered in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, leveraging Chinese ADS providers — initially WeRide in partnership with Uber, and eventually Pony.ai, Baidu, and Momenta. A different set of ADS companies are targeting Japan, namely Waymo, Wayve, and Nuro. Nissan, which partners with Wayve and Uber for future projects, also showcased its own ADS in a robotaxi pilot in Yokohama last year.

 

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What Role for Carmakers?

OEMs initially saw AV operations as an opportunity to sell small fleets. However, the increasingly promising AV deployment has enticed carmakers to form partnerships with ADS providers and to integrate their tech more efficiency. Examples of such partnerships include VW-Mobileye, Zeekr-Waymo, Toyota-Waymo, Hyundai-Waymo, Stellantis-Pony.ai, GAC Toyota-Pony.ai, Nissan-WeRide, or Renault-WeRide. Interestingly, neither GM nor Ford signed partnerships in this space since Argo.ai and Cruise were shuttered. 

 

Several OEMs are now designing versions of certain models that meet AV-specific requirements, such as redundancies of safety functions or self-closing doors. These vehicles will be compatible with a variety of ADS, essentially requiring custom design to adapt a given sensor suite. This will allow for interchangeable fitments, thus multiple OEM-ADS provider combinations.

 

Some OEMs are also collaborating directly with Uber. The ride-hailing operator partnered with Nissan (with Wayve’s ADS), Lucid (Nuro’s ADS) as well as Rivian and Zoox (its own ADS). This will allow Uber to expand its product offering, for example with premium rides with Lucid.

 

 

Are Certain Stakeholders Likely to Benefit More than Others?

Given the interchangeability highlighted earlier, OEMs run the risk of seeing their product commoditize unless they provide unique value. This may be the case for OEMs that offer fit-for-purpose vehicles such as Zeekr or a premium positioning such as Lucid. 

 

Today, leading ADS providers like Waymo, Baidu, Pony.ai, or WeRide are ahead in terms of deployment and product maturity. However, they will be challenged by new players whose tech will mature much faster with (mostly) end-to-end machine learning-based stacks and well-established development tools and infrastructure. This is the case for Canada-based Waabi, which plans on deploying robotaxi on the Uber platform.

 

Lastly, ride-hailing platforms — Uber, Bolt, Lyft — provide the means to scale AV operations as they have strong brand recognition and significantly better access to riders than ADS providers. For reference, Uber offers about 500 times as many rides as Waymo per week. The aggressive stance taken by these platforms to build broad partner ecosystems will give them leverage to negotiate advantageous conditions with both carmakers and ADS providers, especially as these “building blocks” will likely be largely interchangeable. This may entice ADS providers to continue operating the service themselves in some instances, as Waymo does in most U.S. cities and will apparently do in London. In most cases, AV deployment will still require the critical assistance of fleet management companies such as Avomo and supervision experts like Beti.

 

In the end, revenue collected by ride-hailing platforms will be shared with ADS providers (royalties per vehicle and per km), OEMs (a one-time sale), and service providers (fee per vehicles and per km). Ride-hailing operators stand to become orchestrators of the AV ecosystem, thus will likely benefit the most.