Another Robotaxi Service Will Launch in Texas. But It's Not One You've Heard Of
The effort is the latest partnership between a leading app and an autonomous tech developer, with the ride-hailing industry now taking steps to add driverless vehicles to its fleets.
Texas is increasingly becoming the most important state in autonomous vehicle development and launches, including driverless trucks.
Waymo isn't the only robotaxi developer in the US at the moment, even though it easily has most of the momentum as an operator of its own fleets.
After years of backing various SAE Level 4 development efforts, Uber is now progressing to the roll-out stage with a number of partners. The ride-hailing giant is teaming up with May Mobility in a multi-year strategic partnership, with the latter set to launch thousands of robotaxis on Uber's app platform.
And the first location that will see May Mobility's autonomous vehicles under the Uber umbrella will be Arlington, Texas. The robotaxis are scheduled to launch there by the end of this year.
"The partnership highlights both companies' shared ambition to quickly scale AV use in ride-hail, broadening access to AVs across diverse markets and driving greater consumer choice," May Mobility noted.
In practice, this means that later in 2025 Uber will offer its users in Arlington the option of using May's hybrid-electric Toyota Sienna models on certain trips, at first with safety drivers on board, before moving on to driverless operations. So human Uber drivers will still remain on the roads of the city.
Last year Ann Arbor-based May Mobility has also teamed up with Lyft to bring the same Sienna robotaxis to Atlanta by 2025 in a partnership model that is becoming very common in the autonomous vehicle industry, with an existing ride-hailing app providing the user base and the fleet services that robotaxis require.
Hearst Owned
This year is shaping up to be a big one for May Mobility, just at a time when robotaxis are starting to see launches in major markets outside the west coast and the southwest.
May's planned launch in Arlington later this year means that Texas alone could see three different robotaxi services, with Tesla planning its own Austin launch for June after Waymo kicked off operations in its hometown earlier this year.
"Launching on the Uber platform is a big signal to the market that May Mobility is ready to quickly expand to major markets as the pre-eminent autonomy-as-a-service provider," said Edwin Olson, CEO and co-founder of May Mobility.
Of course, one of the reasons this is happening in Arlington, of all places, is not because there is a shortage of human-driven Ubers or privately owned vehicles.
The Lone Star state has a very liberal regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles of all types, and Texas has also been the focal point of most of the country's autonomous truck testing and deployment efforts.
In fact, driverless trucks are already in operation in Texas, and more are on the way soon.
It remains to be seen whether any robotaxi service will be able to catch up to Waymo, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft are bound to play a major role in Level 4 services' expansion in the US and overseas via partnerships with autonomous tech developers.
Will robotaxis outnumber human gig-economy drivers by 2035 in the US, or will they remain a minority in the ride-hailing app fleets? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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