Waymo, Uber push back on competition as AV race heats up

Autonomous vehicle companies like Tesla and Waymo are defending the safety of their technology with data that proves that human drivers get in more accidents than their AVs. 

Waymo and Tesla are pushing for national self-driving laws because they claim the current patchwork of regulations hinders innovation.

Are autonomous vehicles safer than human drivers?

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is set to hold a hearing titled “Hit the Road, Mac: The Future of Self-Driving Cars.” 

Mauricio Pena, Waymo’s Chief Safety Officer, plans to tell senators that his company’s vehicles are far safer than humans. In written testimony that Reuters claims to have seen, Pena stated that Waymo cars have been involved in 10 times fewer serious injury or fatal crashes compared to human drivers covering the same distance. 

His data is from an independent audit and over 200 million miles of fully autonomous driving on public roads. Currently, Waymo provides about 400,000 rides every week in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are currently investigating Waymo after reports of a robotaxi striking a child near an elementary school and several incidents where vehicles illegally passed school buses that were loading or unloading children. 

Critics, including some local officials in San Francisco, have called for more local control over these fleets after incidents involving blocked emergency vehicles and even the death of a local “bodega cat” named KitKat in 2025.

Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, says that Tesla cars with FSD (Supervised) engaged drive an average of 5.1 million miles before a major collision. In comparison, the U.S. average for human drivers is one major crash every 699,000 miles. For minor accidents, Tesla reports one every 1.5 million miles, while the national average is one every 229,000 miles.

Despite these impressive numbers, the NHTSA is investigating nearly 3 million Tesla vehicles because of reports of traffic-safety violations. Another investigation focuses on 2.4 million Teslas following four crashes that happened in low-visibility conditions like fog or dust. 

Tesla maintains that FSD still requires active human supervision and is not a “level 5” fully autonomous system yet. However, the company recently launched robotaxi rides in Austin without safety monitors in the car.

Right now, there is a “patchwork” of different state laws regarding autonomous vehicles and companies argue that this makes it hard to grow. They want a single national standard that would allow them to deploy thousands of cars without steering wheels or pedals. 

Senator Ted Cruz, who chairs the committee, has argued that 94% of crashes are caused by human error, and that AVs could save thousands of lives and help people with disabilities travel more easily.

Can Uber survive a shift to Robotaxis?

Uber Technologies Inc. is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, but analysts are more focused on the “AV threat” than on the company’s current profits. Uber’s stock has dropped about 22% since its record high in October 2025. On Tuesday alone, the stock fell another 4%.

Robotaxis offer the same service as Uber without the cost of a human driver, but manufacturing costs for autonomous vehicles far surpass those of regular vehicles. 

JPMorgan analyst Douglas Anmuth said that “autonomous vehicle headline risk” is creating constant volatility for Uber’s stock. Another analyst from Wedbush, Scott Devitt, estimated that about 40% of Uber’s ride-sharing bookings are directly exposed to competition from AVs.

Waymo recently raised $16 billion, bringing its total valuation to $126 billion, while Uber has a market cap of $168 billion. Notably, Waymo has fewer than 3,000 cars on its platform, while Uber has millions of human drivers. If Waymo scales up its fleet, its valuation could soon surpass Uber’s.

Uber’s approach to the autonomous vehicle competition so far has been collaborative, with the company announcing deals with WeRide and Baidu’s Apollo Go. Uber is also working with Nvidia to help develop autonomous driving models using their massive amount of driving data.

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