Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.
A quick housekeeping note: the transportation newsletter will not run next Friday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. For our readers in the United States, I hope you have a safe and drama-free holiday filled with family, friends, delicious food, and long walks. Good luck to those who are traveling. To our international readers, I have not forgotten you, but everyone needs a little break. I will be back the following week.
The past week featured a flood of robotaxi news, largely driven by a series of expansion announcements from Waymo. Waymo, which already operates commercial robotaxi services in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, has now added more cities to its list. The company will begin manually driving in Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa next year, a necessary step before driverless testing and deployment. Additional cities where the Alphabet-owned self-driving company plans to deploy in 2026 include Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Waymo is also testing in New York City and plans to offer commercial rides internationally, starting with London and Tokyo.
Waymo was not the only company making autonomous vehicle news. Tesla received a ride-hailing permit in Arizona, the last regulatory hurdle required to launch a robotaxi service there. Meanwhile, Zoox is beginning to open its custom-built robotaxis to the public in San Francisco through its early rider program.
All these developments raise an important question: when will robotaxis reach a tipping point that leads to fundamental changes in how people think about moving from point A to point B? Perhaps more unclear is how that shift will affect society and industries, both old and new. While I cannot answer the second question, I have some ideas about the first.
In my view, we are not there yet. Waymo’s rapid deployment will certainly introduce the idea and experience to more people, but the volume from one player is not enough. Reaching that tipping point will require three key elements: geography, competition, and an ecosystem spillover effect.
Certain cities will carry more societal weight than others in reaching this milestone. While saturation in San Francisco is meaningful, it is also a region that serves as a literal technology incubator. To me, robotaxi saturation in densely populated cities in the Southeast and East Coast, as well as in mid-tier cities in the Midwest, will be the true indicator of a tipping point.
I am also looking for a startup spillover effect, where an ecosystem of new businesses is launched and supported because of robotaxis. Service-related businesses are an obvious outcome, but even startups like Point One Navigation, which developed precise location technology, would qualify under this definition.
Finally, competition is crucial. It matters because it can drive down prices for users and introduce different business models.
In other news, many sources have been speaking with senior reporter Sean O’Kane about the electric autonomous startup Monarch Tractor. Some shared an internal company memo indicating the startup is precariously close to shutting down. In the memo, executives warned staff that it may need to lay off more than one hundred employees or possibly even cease operations. Monarch has raised at least two hundred twenty million dollars since its founding seven years ago. It underwent a restructuring in late 2024 to cut costs and expand into new areas, including licensing its autonomous technology. That turnaround plan is underway, but Monarch may run out of cash before it can make significant progress. The company is also facing legal problems, as a dealership in Idaho sued Monarch for breach of contract and allegedly violating its warranty because the startup’s tractors were unable to operate autonomously.
A selection of notable deals from the past week follows. Autonomy, the EV subscription company founded by Scott Painter, secured twenty-five million dollars in financing to acquire about one thousand two hundred fifty vehicles. This will expand its fleet beyond Tesla to include Volvo and Polestar models. Pionix, a Germany-based EV charging technology startup, raised eight million euros in seed funding led by Ascend Capital Partners. Point One Navigation, a San Francisco-based startup that developed technology to provide precise location within one to three centimeters, raised thirty-five million dollars in a Series C round led by Khosla Ventures. Japanese self-driving tech startup Turing raised about fifteen point three billion yen, or ninety-seven point seven million dollars, in equity and debt. Sortera, a startup that developed a system to separate aluminum grades with over ninety-five percent accuracy, raised twenty million dollars in equity and twenty-five million dollars in debt.
Here are other notable reads and industry tidbits. Ford has joined Amazon Autos, allowing customers to shop for, finance, and purchase certified pre-owned vehicles on the site. Meanwhile, Ford faced a potential setback after another fire broke out at the Novelis aluminum plant in Oswego, New York, which supplies sheet metal for Ford’s trucks, including the F-150 Lightning. Google continues to push its Gemini AI to as many devices as possible, including cars. Gemini will replace Google Assistant in Android Auto, the smartphone projection technology integrated into millions of vehicles. Another legal brawl has started in the electric aviation industry, with Joby Aviation suing Archer Aviation over allegations that its rival used stolen trade secrets extracted from a former employee. Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 CEO Toto Wolff sold a portion of his holdings in the team to CrowdStrike founder and CEO George Kurtz. Pony.ai launched a fourth-generation autonomous truck lineup jointly developed with Sany Truck and Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor, with deployment planned for 2026. Stellantis’ long-delayed all-electric Jeep Recon will finally go into production next year. A report from The Verge notes that Tesla is getting better at reporting Full Self-Driving data, but flaws remain. Toyota is increasing its bet on hybrid vehicles in the U.S. with plans to invest nine hundred twelve million dollars in five factories to expand production. Uber Eats has partnered with sidewalk delivery robot company Starship Technologies to deliver food in the U.K. starting later this year. Volvo canceled a five-year-old contract with Luminar, escalating a bitter fight between the lidar sensor company and its biggest customer. The Washington Post published an article on the deadliest roads in America, featuring an interactive map that lets you pinpoint danger zones in cities across the United States.
Finally, for those interested in automated driving terminology, The Autonocast podcast recently recorded an interview with Bryant Walker Smith. The discussion covered the origins of the SAE levels, how he hopes to improve them, and his latest paper titled “Self-Driving Means Self-Driving.”