Uber And Lyft Will Roll Out Robotaxis This Year. But There’s A Problem

Uber and Lyft are preparing to deploy robotaxis this year in select U.S. cities. New app features will allow users to use phones to open the trunk and honk to locate the vehicle. The companies are training crews to maintain the cameras and lidar and scouting idling and charging locations.

Your Uber and Lyft rides could be fundamentally different starting this year.

The two ride-hailing giants are reportedly preparing to deploy robotaxis with new app features and are building the required support infrastructure in select U.S. cities where they will operate.

It will mark the beginning of a huge shift for urban transportation, but all eyes will be on how the companies earn public trust and tackle challenges like vandalism, complex traffic situations and adverse weather.

Automakers, tech giants and ride-hailing companies are betting big on robotaxis. They think autonomous vehicles have the potential to reduce road accidents caused by human error, lower labor costs, increase profits in the long term and lower emissions by using fully electric cars.

Google parent company Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving EVs are already operational in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Austin, with plans to expand to more cities this year.

Now The Wall Street Journal reports that both Uber and Lyft are preparing to have robotaxis on their apps starting this year.

Uber has partnered with Waymo to deploy its self-driving Jaguar I-Pace EVs in Austin and Atlanta starting this year. Lyft has partnered with start-up May Mobility, AV technology company Mobileye and dashcam firm Nexar to deploy robotaxis in Atlanta.

Uber is scouting for locations for the vehicles to idle. It’s also working with fleet partners to convert their facilities into hubs for the robotaxis to charge and equip them with high-speed internet to handle the heavy data demand. Lyft is reportedly doing the same with its Flexdrive vehicle rental locations.

Both companies once hoped to develop driverless cars of their own. But they sold their costly self-driving projects during the pandemic to focus on profits.

Now they’re teaming up with companies further ahead in deploying the tech such as Waymo. They will get a cut from the taxi bookings, whereas the robotaxi companies will unlock access to millions of customers thanks to the vast user base of Uber and Lyft.

The robotaxis, however, have a mountain to climb in terms of safety, public trust and logistics.

Waymo riders are facing a new form of harassment as people have been hostile towards self-driving cars—vandalising, threatening passengers and obstructing the vehicles. General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi division suspended operations last year after one of its Chevrolet Bolt EVs dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco.

Riders interviewed by The Washington Post argued that human drivers can navigate such dangerous situations better. There’s also the question of how these vehicles will operate in adverse weather—cameras, lidar and radar can suffer from reduced visibility and snow.

Despite this, Waymo ridership has increased several fold over the years, a sign of a growing user base warming up to robotaxis. Waymo said nearly 500,000 passengers used its service in August 2024, up from just 20,000 from the same month a year ago. It reported over 4 million trips in 2024.

The incoming Trump administration is also expected to exert its influence over autonomous vehicle regulations. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now the co-chair of the newly formed Department Of Government Efficiency and he's expected to advice the U.S. government on streamlining approvals for autonomous vehicles. Tesla hopes to launch its Robotaxi by 2027.

Ultimately, the second half of this decade will be both a testing ground and a launchpad for this technology. How companies and regulators tackle these challenges will determine whether the next cab you and I would want to ride in would be driverless or still have a human behind the wheel.