Robotaxi Expansion in the US Faces Rising Backlash
Hail a ride in parts of America today, and there is a growing chance nobody is behind the wheel. That scenario is no longer science fiction. Robotaxis are spreading across the US in 2026. The industry’s leading player is expanding fast. However, crashes, frozen vehicles, and frustrated cities tell a messier story beneath the headline numbers.
The robotaxis US expansion story belongs mainly to Waymo. The Alphabet-backed company now operates approximately 3,000 robotaxis across Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin, and Atlanta.
Waymo is building a new manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona, with Magna to produce over 2,000 additional vehicles. It is preparing to launch in Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C. later this year. Fifteen or more new markets are planned for 2026 and beyond.
Tesla tells a different story. Tesla’s robotaxi fleet peaked around December 2025 and has been in steady decline ever since. The company has not explained why active vehicle counts are falling. Tesla’s crash rate with unsupervised vehicles has been reported at roughly four times worse than that of human drivers. In just one month in Austin, Tesla’s robotaxis crashed into fixed objects, trees, poles, buses, and trucks.
Robotaxis US Expansion Hits Emergency Services
Cities are not just watching the expansion. They are dealing with its consequences directly. Public safety officers and first responders are having to be the ones to physically move stalled robotaxis when incidents occur. That burden is generating real resentment at the local government level. In China, the problem surfaced in a more dramatic way.
On March 31, over a hundred of Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis simultaneously froze on the streets of Wuhan. Vehicles stalled on overpasses and elevated roads, trapping passengers for up to two hours. A few weeks later, Beijing suspended all new autonomous driving permits nationwide. The US has not gone that far. However, the complaints from city officials are growing louder with every stalled vehicle that requires a human to come move it.
The competitive picture varies significantly by company. Uber and Lyft are gradually adding robotaxis from Waymo and other partners to their ride-hail networks in select markets. Most other players, including Amazon’s Zoox, Toyota-backed May Mobility, Hyundai-owned Motional and Uber-backed Nuro, are in various stages of testing.
On cost, Tesla theoretically holds an advantage. Morgan Stanley estimates Tesla’s cost-per-mile at $0.81. Waymo costs $1.43 per mile. Traditional rideshare averages $1.71. However, cost-per-mile means little when the fleet is shrinking rather than growing.
Tesla’s 20 active unsupervised vehicles versus Waymo’s thousands, operating in more cities with broader geofences and at higher utilisation rates, illustrates the gulf between the two programs. Elon Musk has promised “widespread” robotaxi coverage across the US by the end of 2026.
He made a similar promise for 2020. The pattern is well documented. The gap between Musk’s promises and Tesla’s operational reality is wider today than at any point in the program’s history.
