May Mobility, Tesla, Lyft, And Others Are Ready To Challenge In The Robotaxi Arena

Recently, robotaxi leader Waymo said it was looking to expand its services to ten new cities in the United States.

This expansion would come in the form of testing prior to any plans of full-fledged deployment.

This followed a series of moves that cemented its place in the ride-hailing autonomous vehicle sector. From partnering with Uber to driving into new locations to expanding its services to a whole new country (Tokyo), Waymo has been busy.

At the same time, the company faces stiff competition from new players in the market, while Waymo’s longtime rival Cruise bowed out of the race.

Tesla announced its intention to enter the game a while ago, as CEO Elon Musk revealed in April 2024 that the company was set to unveil its Robotaxi. This unveiling finally occurred in October 2024 at the company’s We, Robot event, along with confirmation of the robotaxi’s name—Cybercab.

Tesla also revealed Robovan (pronounced ruh-BO-vehn), a self-driving ride-hailing service that will also be available for people to buy.

Furthermore, Musk announced that Tesla will bring its “unsupervised” robotaxi service first to Austin, Texas, in June.

May Mobility is another potential competitor in this space. The company has been operating its robotaxis in the City of Peachtree Corners, a suburb of Atlanta, since September 2024.

It has been offering public rides in its autonomous Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) to visitors of Peachtree Corner’s Curiosity Lab, one of the United States’ first smart city environments powered by real-world connected infrastructure.

The move, which was made in collaboration with Curiosity Lab, T-Mobile, and the City of Peachtree Corners, has been executed with a driver in the vehicle.

Now, the company is set to hit the next level.

As per a news release, May Mobility will now deploy these vehicles without drivers behind the wheel, marking its first commercial driver-out autonomous transportation service in the City of Peachtree Corners.

The service will be open to the public Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and can be booked through the May Mobility app. Each vehicle can fit up to five people at a time.


“Peachtree Corners will be our third driverless operation, and we are excited to debut our first publicly available driverless service in the City of Peachtree Corners,” said Edwin Olson, CEO and Founder of May Mobility. “This launch reinforces the importance of working with cities and communities everywhere to solve real transportation challenges.”

However, this isn’t the company’s first such deployment, having enjoyed successful demonstration deployments in Sun City, Arizona, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Ahead of this, ride-hailing service provider Lyft is planning to bring its robotaxis to users as soon as 2026. The company had partnered with Mobileye, a leading provider of self-driving technology and ADAS, as well as Tesla’s original Autopilot partner, back in November 2024.

Now, the two revealed that their robotaxi service would launch in Dallas, Texas, to begin with, and expand to other cities if all goes according to plan.

The fleet will be owned and financed by Marubeni, a Japanese conglomerate with fleet management experience. However, which vehicle or vehicles or how many will be deployed for the operation has not yet been revealed, if decided.

Yet, Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s EVP of Driver Experience, said that “the plan is to scale to thousands of vehicles across multiple cities after the Texas debut.”

Beyond robotaxis in the U.S., Chinese company Baidu is all set to bring its robotaxi service to Dubai, having received a license in Hong Kong in 2024 for testing autonomous vehicles. Baidu is also entering the AI race with a major move.

BYD, also Chinese and a key player in the electric vehicles (EV) market, is also set to bring autonomous driving technology powered by recent international AI sensation DeepSeek, for free.

In fact, the company’s CEO Wang Chuanfu said its advanced smart driving will become a standard safety feature, akin to seatbelts and airbags.

While this move isn’t strictly robotaxi-centric, BYD has a partnership in place with Uber, with Uber bringing 100,000 BYD EVs to its ride-hailing platform.

Do you think Waymo conducts a commanding position in the robotaxi sector, or will the company be dethroned by new entrants?

Let us know in the comments below!