Deployment
Robotaxi deployment tracker: which operators run driverless in which cities
Announcement volume and deployed capability have never tracked each other in this industry. This separates them.
- Operators tracked
- 10
- In public service
- 5
- Wound down
- 1
- Reviewed
- August 2026
Method
The test applied by this robotaxi deployment tracker is deliberately narrow. An operator is recorded as running public driverless service when an ordinary member of the public can hail the vehicle and no employee is inside it. Employee-only pilots, press demonstrations, and services that carry a safety operator in the cabin are all real milestones, but they are not the same milestone, and conflating them is how a decade of coverage produced the impression that driverless cars were perpetually eighteen months away.
Two consequences follow for any robotaxi deployment tracker. First, the list of operators in genuine public service is shorter than the list of companies commonly described as robotaxi companies. Second, several programmes appear here with launch dates years after their first public announcement, because the announcement described a pilot and the date records the service.
In service
How the robotaxi deployment tracker defines service by operators
The table below lists operators carrying public passengers with nobody from the company in the vehicle, across all cities where robotaxi deployment has reached that standard.
| Operator | Parent | Service areas | Since | Vehicle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waymo | Alphabet | Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin | 2020 | Retrofitted Jaguar I-Pace |
| Baidu Apollo Go | Baidu | Wuhan, Beijing, Chongqing | 2022 | Purpose-built RT6 and retrofitted fleet |
| Pony.ai | Independent | Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen | 2022 | Retrofitted Toyota and BAIC platforms |
| WeRide | Independent | Guangzhou, Abu Dhabi | 2022 | Robotaxi and robobus platforms |
| Zoox | Amazon | Las Vegas, San Francisco Bay Area | 2025 | Purpose-built bidirectional robotaxi |
Cities, fixed routes, freight and withdrawn programmes
| Operator | Status | Service areas | Since | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May Mobility | Driverless on fixed routes | Peachtree Corners, Grand Rapids, Arlington, Sun City | 2023 | Operates shuttle-style fixed and semi-fixed routes, often under municipal or transit-agency contracts rather than as a consumer app. |
| Motional | Scaled back | Las Vegas | 2023 | Paused commercial passenger operations in 2024 to concentrate on the Ioniq 5 platform, after running a driverless service in Las Vegas. |
| Aurora | Driverless freight | Dallas–Houston corridor | 2025 | Freight rather than passengers. The corridor model targets repeatable long-haul routes where the operating domain can be tightly bounded. |
| Nuro | Licensing | Platform licensing | 2024 | Moved from operating its own goods-delivery fleet to licensing its driving system to vehicle makers and other operators. |
| Cruise | Wound down | San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin | 2022 | California suspended its permits in October 2023 following a collision and the handling of the report that followed. GM ended the robotaxi programme and reabsorbed the company in 2024. |
Record
How deployment actually progressed
- 2015
First public-road testing permits issued in California to a handful of vehicle makers and technology companies.
- 2018
A fatal collision during automated testing in Tempe, Arizona ends one operator's programme and reshapes how the sector talks about safety drivers.
- 2020
Fully driverless public rides begin in the Phoenix East Valley — no employee in the vehicle, open to ordinary passengers.
- 2022
Paid driverless service starts in Chinese tier-one cities and in San Francisco, moving the question from feasibility to unit economics.
- 2023
The San Francisco expansion is approved and then partially suspended within months, after a collision and a disputed incident report.
- 2024
One major programme is wound down entirely; another pauses commercial service. Consolidation replaces expansion as the sector's theme.
- 2025
Purpose-built vehicles without driving controls enter public service, and driverless Class 8 freight begins on a fixed Texas corridor.
The shape of robotaxi deployment is worth stating plainly: eleven years from the first public-road testing permits to purpose-built vehicles without driving controls carrying passengers, with one fatal collision, one high-profile permit suspension and one complete programme shutdown along the way. The technology arrived. The timeline did not resemble any of the forecasts collected in the report library, and the companies that survived to deploy were mostly not the ones the market favoured in 2015 — a pattern the D20 index roster traces from the other side.
Reference