B2 Reading: The Robotaxi Race, Three Roads to a Driverless Future
Read the article about Waymo, Tesla and Uber and fill in the gaps.
For years, driverless taxis were always "five years away". In 2026, they are finally a daily reality in a growing number of American cities, and three very different companies are competing to what could become one of the biggest markets in transport.
The clear front-runner is Waymo, owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet. After more than a decade of development, it was providing around 500,000 paid rides a week by early 2026, operates more than 3,000 vehicles in over ten US cities and aims to reach a million weekly rides by the end of the year. Investors valued the company at $126 billion when it raised $16 billion earlier this year.
Tesla is the . Its Robotaxi service began in Austin in 2025, using Model Y cars with a safety monitor on board, and in September 2026 it started offering paid rides in the Cybercab, a two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals. The has been cautious: only a few dozen Cybercabs are authorised, they operate in limited areas of Austin, and the US road safety regulator is investigating whether a car without driver controls meets federal safety standards. Elon Musk also has a long of setting ambitious deadlines for self-driving that have later slipped.
Uber is playing a different game. Having sold its own self-driving unit in 2020, it now aims to be the platform where customers can book robotaxis from many different developers, and it has committed more than $10 billion to this . Its risk is that the companies building the cars, Waymo in particular, may prefer to keep their customers for themselves.
Beneath the business rivalry lies a fierce technical . Waymo's vehicles combine cameras with radar and lidar, a laser-based sensor that builds a precise 3D picture of the surroundings, even in darkness. This approach is , but supporters argue that different types of sensor provide an essential if one of them fails. Tesla relies on cameras alone, arguing that humans drive using only their eyes, so a powerful enough AI should be able to do the same. Musk has dismissed lidar as unnecessary, while critics reply that cameras can be by bright sunlight, fog or heavy rain. The answer matters enormously: if Tesla is right, its cheaper cars could far faster than Waymo's.
Whoever wins, the will be huge, from cheaper and possibly safer transport to the loss of millions of driving jobs. The question for passengers is simpler: would you a car with nobody behind the wheel?
The clear front-runner is Waymo, owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet. After more than a decade of development, it was providing around 500,000 paid rides a week by early 2026, operates more than 3,000 vehicles in over ten US cities and aims to reach a million weekly rides by the end of the year. Investors valued the company at $126 billion when it raised $16 billion earlier this year.
Tesla is the . Its Robotaxi service began in Austin in 2025, using Model Y cars with a safety monitor on board, and in September 2026 it started offering paid rides in the Cybercab, a two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals. The has been cautious: only a few dozen Cybercabs are authorised, they operate in limited areas of Austin, and the US road safety regulator is investigating whether a car without driver controls meets federal safety standards. Elon Musk also has a long of setting ambitious deadlines for self-driving that have later slipped.
Uber is playing a different game. Having sold its own self-driving unit in 2020, it now aims to be the platform where customers can book robotaxis from many different developers, and it has committed more than $10 billion to this . Its risk is that the companies building the cars, Waymo in particular, may prefer to keep their customers for themselves.
Beneath the business rivalry lies a fierce technical . Waymo's vehicles combine cameras with radar and lidar, a laser-based sensor that builds a precise 3D picture of the surroundings, even in darkness. This approach is , but supporters argue that different types of sensor provide an essential if one of them fails. Tesla relies on cameras alone, arguing that humans drive using only their eyes, so a powerful enough AI should be able to do the same. Musk has dismissed lidar as unnecessary, while critics reply that cameras can be by bright sunlight, fog or heavy rain. The answer matters enormously: if Tesla is right, its cheaper cars could far faster than Waymo's.
Whoever wins, the will be huge, from cheaper and possibly safer transport to the loss of millions of driving jobs. The question for passengers is simpler: would you a car with nobody behind the wheel?