B1 Reading: The Robotaxi Race
Read about Waymo, Tesla and Uber and fill in the gaps.
Imagine you order a taxi on your phone. A car arrives, but there is nobody in the driver's seat. In some American cities, this is already . Three big companies are racing to the future of taxis: Waymo, Tesla and Uber.
Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, is the . It started as a Google project in 2009. By early 2026, it was giving around half a million paid rides every week in more than ten US cities, and it wants to reach one million by the end of the year.
Tesla is , but it is moving fast. In September 2026, it started paid rides in Austin, Texas, in the Cybercab, a small two-seat car with no steering wheel and no pedals. For now, there are only a few dozen Cybercabs, they can only drive in some parts of the city, and the US government is whether they are safe.
Uber does not build its own robotaxis. Instead, it wants its app to be the place where people robotaxis from many different companies. It plans to spend more than $10 billion on this idea.
There is also a big technical between Waymo and Tesla. Waymo's cars "see" the road with cameras, radar and lidar, a sensor that uses lasers to distances. Lidar is , but Waymo says it makes the cars safer. Tesla's cars only use cameras. Elon Musk says that humans drive with their eyes, so cameras are , and they are much cheaper.
Which company will win? Nobody knows yet. But many taxi drivers are about their jobs. Would you a car with no driver?
Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, is the . It started as a Google project in 2009. By early 2026, it was giving around half a million paid rides every week in more than ten US cities, and it wants to reach one million by the end of the year.
Tesla is , but it is moving fast. In September 2026, it started paid rides in Austin, Texas, in the Cybercab, a small two-seat car with no steering wheel and no pedals. For now, there are only a few dozen Cybercabs, they can only drive in some parts of the city, and the US government is whether they are safe.
Uber does not build its own robotaxis. Instead, it wants its app to be the place where people robotaxis from many different companies. It plans to spend more than $10 billion on this idea.
There is also a big technical between Waymo and Tesla. Waymo's cars "see" the road with cameras, radar and lidar, a sensor that uses lasers to distances. Lidar is , but Waymo says it makes the cars safer. Tesla's cars only use cameras. Elon Musk says that humans drive with their eyes, so cameras are , and they are much cheaper.
Which company will win? Nobody knows yet. But many taxi drivers are about their jobs. Would you a car with no driver?