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The year robotaxies moved into the fast lane.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

2025 turned out to be a pretty big year for autonomous vehicles.

Waymo is the leader in the Robotaxi race, and over the last year, its signature Jaguar EVs have become a common sight on the streets and recently freeways of cities around the country.

Companies like Uber and Zooks have

expanded their fleets to several metropolitan areas, and Tesla finally rolled out its cybercab service

in a limited capacity in Austin. We spoke to Kirsten Koresek, transportation editor at TechCrunch,

about what helped turn

robotaxies from a sci-fi novelty to a regular part of the landscape in 2025.

The boring story is that it's taken years of development and testing, but actually there's been

some, I guess, big climactic moments over the years. And one of them was several years ago.

We sort of hit this peak autonomous vehicle buzz. And then all of this consolidation, all of these companies folding, a few survivors, Waymo being one of them, Zooks being one of them being acquired by Amazon.

But I think the big moment for at least Waymo, I would say, is receiving permits that allowed

it to operate commercially in California. That was in August 2023. And really, you saw

2024 is that like that moment where they were starting to push in.

In 2025, it was let's go. I think in April of 2025,000 rides per week. Now it's beyond that,

although they're not sharing the number. and their next goal is a million.

And then you see these other companies. So slow, steady, and the few survivors making in rows in 2025 is a big deal. Waymo is clearly the leader here and kind of the longest running.

...