Scaling robotaxis hinges on servicing between rides

A guest column by Aseon Labs co-founder Dan Keene argues the robotaxi bottleneck is operations, not driving software: Waymo has logged over 220 million autonomous miles and about 500,000 paid rides a week in 14 cities, while Uber operates in over 15,000. Each vehicle reset takes roughly two hours, and only 54% of Waymo's 86 million reported miles through 2025 carried a passenger.

• Waymo: 220M+ autonomous miles, ~500K paid rides weekly, 14 cities
• Uber: 15,000+ cities and 3.9 billion trips last quarter
• Only 54% of Waymo's 86M miles through 2025 had a passenger
• Energizing a charging site in California takes up to 1.9 years, a substation up to 8.9