Spotting an autonomous vehicle driving around the streets of Austin is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s become as common as 100-degree days in July or a plague of grackles descending on the Hancock Center H-E-B at sunset. What’s less common: Austinites actually hitching a robotic ride.
That all changed in March, when riders had the chance to opt in to Waymo service on the Uber app. Now, Austinites have access to a technology that once seemed impossibly futuristic.
As AVs continue to pop up in more cities nationwide, many will be looking to the experiences in Austin as a guide for what to expect from the technology. With Waymos in operation for months, Tesla’s robotaxi service launched June 22 (with a safety driver in the passenger seat), and major companies like Volkswagen and Amazon testing vehicles, the AV experience in the coming years in Austin figures to have significant ramifications for the transportation future in the city and beyond.
Good News, Bad News
Some early data has suggested that Austinites have embraced the opportunity to use Waymos. YipitData found that Waymo rides accounted for 20% of Uber rides during the last week of March. And, according to an Uber spokesperson, customers have been rating their Waymo trips with Uber, on average, as 4.9 stars in Austin.
But some rides have not been so positive. Becky Levin Navarro is among the customers who did not have an experience that she deemed worthy of five stars. What started as a Saturday moms-on-the-town hangout took an unexpected turn when the group of four women tried to end a Waymo ride set to begin at Matt’s El Rancho and end at Deep Eddy Cabaret.
“We were just four moms going out on a Saturday afternoon,” she said. “We were like, ‘This is so exciting.’”
As the Waymo drove up the intersection of Veterans Drive and Lake Austin Boulevard, Deep Eddy Cabaret came into view on their left. The car then moved into the right lane and put on its signal, seemingly driving farther away from their destination. They attempted to end the ride, but the vehicle proceeded to loop around MoPac and eventually stopped at a curve on West Sixth Street under the highway.
“This is not a safe spot,” they told the customer service representative on the line.
Meanwhile, the vehicle added its own commentary. “Vehicle approaching,” it warned when a car would come upon them.
While they didn’t want to get out at that spot, they also didn’t want to be stuck in the car. They tried to open the door, but it didn’t work (riders need to pull the handle twice for it to open). After five minutes, they managed to get out.
Levin Navarro gave the ride one star. She added that she’s not sure if she’ll get in another Waymo anytime soon.
According to city data, 26 of the 108 AV incidents reported to the city, which began tracking incidents two years ago, came between March and May 2025. In one report, a police officer noted that a Waymo had passed a funeral procession despite their emergency lights being on. On May 27, a resident reported an issue with a Waymo blocking their driveway.
“We can’t leave the driveway or get into our driveway,” they reported. “There is a driverless car running on the street blocking our driveway. It has been there for 1 hour and I have know [sic] idea why.”
Dueling Academics
Among academics who study transportation, there are certain ideas that are broadly agreed on. For example, many agree that when highways add more lanes, it eventually leads to more traffic on roads – a concept known as induced demand.
However, that is not necessarily the case when it comes to AVs and what they mean for our transportation future. Some see the vehicles as the solution to our road safety woes, while others see the cars as an overly complicated solution considering that public transit, biking, and walking are all safe forms of transport.
Peter Norton is a professor at the University of Virginia and author of Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving. Norton is not necessarily opposed to autonomous, or as he prefers, robotic, cars driving people. He said that he is even impressed by the technology. But he is skeptical about what it will mean for society, in part because of how expensive the vehicles are.
“A successful robotic car experience would be cost effective,” Norton said. “What we’re getting instead is a very expensive service that only appears to be cost effective because companies like Waymo are willing to lose a lot of money on every ride, and I think it’s telling that they won’t tell you how much money they lose on every ride, because to me, that means they’re not proud of it.” Waymo declined to comment on its finances.
Norton said the company is willing to lose money on the endeavor, because someday the vehicles might be attractive in the luxury passenger transportation market. So while rideshare can work like an advertisement for rich riders, meanwhile, if cities and states begin to accommodate these vehicles, they’ll also do so at a cost to other transportation projects. Instead, he would like to see cities invest in public transportation systems and bike lanes, as well as reform zoning to permit mixed use and affordable housing.
“The better your city transportation system is, the less you have any need for robotic taxis,” Norton said.
Junfeng Jiao, director of the Urban Information Lab at UT-Austin, views the vehicles more positively because of their impact on road safety. Between Waymo’s lidar sensors and cameras, he said that the cars are far safer than human beings, as we can only rely on our eyes and ears. Waymo “drives much better than a human being, even much better than myself,” Jiao added.
Safety has been a core promise for companies like Waymo. Norton said the company’s approach has been to play the long game by having its cars be more cautious than competitors. One of the other companies set to enter the market is Tesla. Some question if Tesla will be as cautious. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology. Jiao said he believes AVs broadly will “get better and better through innovation and improvement,” thanks to NHTSA safety standards.
Tesla hasn’t done much to soothe fears about a rushed approach. When it launched the robotaxi service in Austin this week, it was in defiance of some Texas lawmakers, who wrote a letter asking the company to delay. Why? New statewide regulations for autonomous vehicles will take effect in September. “We believe this is in the best interest of both public safety and building public trust in Tesla’s operations,” lawmakers wrote.
In addition to safety, some have voiced concerns that AVs could contribute to sprawl. If someone knows they don’t have to operate their car, why not live an hour away and sleep on the way into work? With this in mind, Jiao said it’s important to plan for “15-minute cities” – the concept that people should be a 15-minute walk or bike ride from most essential services.
As for cost, Jiao thinks it will go down over time and improve accessibility for the public. “Not everybody can drive a car, some are mentally or physically not able to do that,” he said. “We have more and more older population. They might need to have an autonomous vehicle. Or a disabled person, they might need an AV to drive them around. That is a huge benefit to society we cannot overlook.”
The Wait Is Over
Despite differing views in academia, one thing is clear: Companies see Austin as fertile ground to test their technology. Elon Musk posted on X on May 29 that Tesla’s Y model had begun driving around Austin with no one in the driver’s seat “for the past several days.” Tesla’s approach has contrasted with Waymo, which tested its vehicles without drivers for over six months before launching to the public.
“A month ahead of schedule. Next month, first self-delivery from factory to customer,” Musk added in his post. Bloomberg reported that Tesla plans to launch robotaxi service with about 10 vehicles and expanding to a thousand within a few months. (At first, access to rides will be by invitation only.)
Thanks to state law, Texas cities cannot regulate AVs, but Brad Cesak, a spokesperson for Austin Transportation and Public Works, said the city has had communication with Musk’s company. “Tesla is working with the City of Austin’s Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Working Group, which includes staff from multiple City departments,” Cesak said in an email. He added that the city provides AV companies with maps of schools and school zones, information about traffic control for special events, and information about fire and police vehicles. Tesla blocked the city of Austin from releasing robotaxi trial records, according to Reuters.
Dan O’Dowd is the founder of the Dawn Project – an organization whose motto is “Making Computers Safe for Humanity.” Ever since someone showed him YouTube videos featuring Teslas doing weird things in its “Full Self-Driving” mode in 2022, O’Dowd has been ringing the alarm about the dangers of the technology. Referencing the phrase popularized by Mark Zuckerberg, he said that the company has applied a “move fast and break things” mentality “to products that many lives depend on.”
In an effort to raise awareness, the Dawn Project aired an advertisement during the 2023 Super Bowl that depicted a Tesla running over a child in a crosswalk and ignoring stopped school buses. Later that year, a Tesla hit and injured a 17-year-old student who had just exited a school bus in North Carolina.
However, O’Dowd said that he is more confident in other autonomous vehicle companies. “You should do thorough testing before you put things on the road,” O’Dowd said. “As far as I know, Waymo has done that. … Self-driving cars, when they work reliably, consistently everywhere, that’s important. They will save a ton of lives. It just won’t be Tesla.”
Waymo currently has approximately 100 cars in service in Austin, with plans to ramp up to hundreds, according to a company spokesperson. The company issued a recall of more than 1,200 vehicles in May, due to concerns around collisions with chains, gates, and other roadway barriers.
Waymo and Tesla are not the only players in town. Amazon’s Zoox, a company that issued a voluntary recall after a collision between an unoccupied vehicle and a person riding an e-scooter in San Francisco in May, has vehicles operating autonomously with a driver present to take over if needed, according to a company spokesperson. Volkswagen has been testing its van-like vehicles in Austin since July 2023 and also has vehicles in Hamburg and Munich.
Smaller operations are descending on Austin too. Ben Seidl bought a Tesla last August and quickly began to experiment with its “Full Self-Driving” mode in Portland, where he lives. “It just completely freaked me out in a good way,” he said.
One night, his wife was sick in bed upstairs, he was downstairs in his pajamas. She asked if he could go to the store to pick up Sudafed. The store was a short drive away and offered a curbside service. Still in his pajamas, he had the Tesla drive him there. But he began to envision a world where the car would go to pick up the medicine on its own.
The experience gave him the idea for Autolane – a company that orchestrates AV rides and pickups. For example, its OpenCurb OS software would allow for a vehicle to park in a designated space. Store employees could then open the vehicle and place products inside.
Seidl wanted a slice of the Austin AV market, so the company is now testing OpenCurb OS at “one of Austin’s top retail/entertainment destinations.” He wanted in on Austin, because he sees it as a city at the forefront of a transformational transportation moment.
“We really think that Austin is going to become the epicenter of autonomy at least over the next 12 months, as these technologies begin to get tested, first in Austin from Tesla, and then scale all over the world,” Seidl said.
This article appears in June 27 • 2025.