Nevada Opens The Door To Thousands Of Paid Robotaxis, And Tesla Has The Edge

Tesla, Waymo, and Uber got the green light to start charging for robotaxi rides in the county that’s home to Las Vegas.

Tesla Model Y Robotaxi

Photo by: Tesla

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Aug 21, at 7:59am ET

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Nevada has approved the rollout of paid robotaxi rides for three companies.
Waymo, Tesla, and Uber can now operate commercial autonomous taxi services in the state.
The three companies received permits to deploy over 5,000 vehicles over the next 12 months.

Nevada’s Transportation Authority approved three permits allowing Tesla, Uber, and Waymo to offer paid robotaxi rides in Clark County. In total, the three companies can deploy thousands of autonomous cabs over the next 12 months, according to TechCrunch.

With roughly 2.5 million residents, Clark County is the home to Nevada’s three largest cities, including Las Vegas. This gives companies a huge pool of potential clients, but whether or not the three entities will actually deploy thousands upon thousands of driverless taxis over the next 12 months is another story.

Tesla Model Y Robotaxi

Photo by: Tesla

Tesla is the biggest beneficiary, with its permit allowing it to flood the streets with up to 5,000 robotaxis. The company will deploy driverless Model Y electric crossovers at first, according to Tesla representatives who took part in the NTA’s General Session meeting yesterday. Meanwhile, Waymo can deploy 1,000 robotaxis, and Uber another 1,000. The latter will tap its partners, Amazon’s Zoox and Hyundai’s Motional. Zoox had already received an autonomous vehicle network company permit that allows it to operate 100 robotaxis.

Recently, Waymo started offering paid rides in its new Zeekr-made Ojai minivans in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, but the company said that Las Vegas is on the list of upcoming cities. That said, the company didn’t say whether it would deploy both Ojai and Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis in Nevada.

Tesla representatives said the company would be “extremely happy and satisfied” to deploy up to 2,500 vehicles in the next year. “Five thousand has always been a ceiling for us,” said Eric Early, Tesla’s Cybercab chief engineer. “I don’t think we’ll be in a position by this time next year to deploy 5,000 vehicles, and it’s not the technology.”

Zoox autonomous ride-hailing service in Las Vegas

Photo by: Zoox

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Hyundai subsidiary Motional, which will deploy robotaxis on Uber’s behalf, uses Hyundai Ioniq 5 crossovers outfitted with autonomous driving technology. Meanwhile, Zoox is known for its purpose-built steering wheel-less autonomous pod.

Nevada, and Las Vegas in particular, is not completely new to robotaxis. Several startups have been testing their vehicles in limited areas, but these new permits open the floodgates to thousands of driverless commercial vehicles.

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