In autonomous and self-driving vehicle news are Waymo, Mercedes-Benz, NVIDIA, Gatik, PlusAI, TRATON, Tesla, Arbe Robotics, Apera AI, Faraday Future, Raytron, Freenow, Lyft, Waabi, Uber, VinFast and Autobrains.
In this Article
Waymo Vehicle Hits Child in Santa Monica
On January 23, 2026, a Waymo autonomous vehicle struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California, prompting a federal safety investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to Waymo, the child unexpectedly ran into the street from behind a double-parked SUV during the morning drop-off period; the vehicle’s system detected the child and sharply braked, reducing speed from about 17 mph to under 6 mph before making contact, and the child suffered only minor injuries and was able to walk to the sidewalk afterward. Waymo reported the incident to regulators and said its internal models suggest a human driver would likely have hit the child at a higher speed, but the NHTSA is examining whether the robotaxi exercised appropriate caution in a school-zone environment.
Waymo Drops Off at SFO Car Rental Center
Waymo has begun rolling out autonomous passenger trips to and from San Francisco International Airport (SFO), marking a significant expansion of its robotaxi service in the Bay Area after years of negotiations and phased testing. Under a permit approved in late 2025, select riders can now hail Waymo vehicles to pick up or drop off at the airport’s Rental Car Center, with connections to the terminals via the AirTrain, and the company plans to expand access to more airport locations over time. The launch follows earlier phases that included testing with safety drivers and autonomous trips with Waymo employees, and comes as the service continues to grow throughout San Francisco, Silicon Valley and beyond, aiming to meet rising rider demand, especially ahead of major events this year.
Mercedes-Benz Unveils AI-Era S-Class With NVIDIA, Built for Level 4 Autonomy
Mercedes-Benz is marking 140 years of automotive innovation with a new S-Class designed for the AI era, featuring a level 4-ready autonomous driving architecture powered by NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion and full-stack NVIDIA DRIVE AV software. Built on Mercedes-Benz’s MB.OS, the vehicle combines end-to-end AI driving with a parallel classical safety stack under NVIDIA’s Halos safety system to ensure reliable, trust-focused operation. The platform supports future robotaxi and premium chauffeur-style autonomous services and will be integrated into Uber’s mobility network as part of NVIDIA’s partnership with Uber. Leveraging large-scale AI training, high-fidelity simulation, sensor and compute redundancy, and multimodal perception, the new S-Class is designed to handle complex real-world driving scenarios while maintaining Mercedes-Benz’s longstanding standards for safety, quality, and comfort, extending the brand’s safety leadership into the autonomous driving era.
Mercedes-Benz Speeds Up S-Class Robotaxi Plans
Mercedes-Benz is accelerating development of a global robotaxi ecosystem built on its new S-Class, partnering with technology firms Nvidia and Momenta and mobility providers Uber and Lumo. The automaker plans to deploy Level 4 autonomous S-Class shuttles across America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, positioning the luxury sedan as a core platform for driverless mobility services.
The S-Class is engineered with full system redundancies—steering, braking, computing, and power supply—to support fail-safe autonomous operation, while Mercedes-Benz’s MB.OS serves as the software backbone for robotaxi services. Nvidia will contribute its Drive Hyperion architecture and Drive AV Level 4 software, while Momenta is collaborating on a parallel Level 4 development program.
Initial deployments are set for Abu Dhabi, where Lumo, a subsidiary of K2, plans to operate the first S-Class robotaxi test vehicles on public roads later this year. With these partnerships, Mercedes-Benz signals its formal entry into the robotaxi market, aiming to scale luxury autonomous mobility worldwide.
Gatik Reaches Commercial Scale Fully Driverless Trucking
Gatik has become the first company in North America to operate fully driverless trucks at commercial scale, reporting more than $600 million in contracted revenue and daily, revenue-generating deliveries for Fortune 50 retailers with no human driver or safety observer in the vehicle. The milestone signals a shift for autonomous trucking from pilot programs to sustained commercial operations that support regional supply chains.
Since launching freight-only driverless operations in mid-2025, Gatik has completed more than 60,000 fully driverless orders without incident, operating around the clock on highways and surface streets. Powered by its third-generation Gatik Driver™ autonomous system, the company has logged over 2,000 hours of driverless operation and more than 10,000 driverless miles on public roads, including routes of up to 400 miles connecting distribution centers, warehouses, and retail stores. These results underscore Gatik’s ability to deliver safe, reliable, and cost-efficient autonomous freight at scale.
Gatik currently operates 26- and 30-foot medium-duty trucks in markets including Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Ontario, Canada, transporting ambient, refrigerated, and frozen goods. The company is preparing to expand into additional U.S. markets as retailers seek to address driver shortages and rising delivery costs. Its deployment follows independent safety assessments, extensive engagement with federal and state regulators, and first-responder training programs. Gatik’s progress is further supported by its collaboration with Isuzu Motors to integrate SAE Level 4 autonomy into medium-duty truck platforms, paving the way for future mass-produced autonomous-ready vehicles.
PlusAI & TRATON Partners Accelerate Autonomous Trucking
PlusAI and the TRATON GROUP have expanded their global partnership to speed the development and large-scale deployment of Level 4 autonomous trucks in the U.S. and Europe, as PlusAI moves toward a public listing. Under the expanded agreement, TRATON will commit up to $25 million in non-dilutive R&D funding to support factory integration of PlusAI’s SuperDrive™ virtual driver across TRATON brands, nominate a representative to PlusAI’s board following the listing, and receive warrants tied to deployment revenue milestones. Building on a collaboration launched in 2024, the companies have already achieved major technical and operational milestones, including live fleet trials in Texas and driverless safety validation. Together, they aim to commercialize factory-built autonomous trucks through TRATON’s global manufacturing, sales, and service network, addressing driver shortages, rising costs, and demand for safer, more efficient freight operations.
Tesla Robotaxis Undercut Rideshare Rivals with Pricing
New data from rideshare price aggregator Obi shows Tesla’s robotaxi service is reshaping rideshare economics in the San Francisco Bay Area by offering consistently low fares that undercut Uber, Lyft, and Waymo. During a late-2025 study period, Tesla robotaxi rides—still operating with a human safety driver—rarely exceeded $10, with a median price of $7.39 and an average cost of $1.99 per kilometer, less than half the price of competing services. By comparison, median fares were $12.99 for Lyft, $14.94 for Uber, and $17.25 for Waymo, a 133% gap between the lowest and highest prices.
Obi’s findings suggest Tesla is reversing the early “premium” pricing model seen with autonomous rides, while Waymo’s prices have begun converging with Uber and Lyft as those services grow more expensive. The report also shows rapidly rising consumer comfort with autonomous vehicles, with 63% now saying they are comfortable using AVs and nearly half expecting robotaxis to become their primary rideshare option. Safety remains the top concern, and a gender gap persists, with women expressing lower trust in autonomous rides than men, particularly for sensitive trips such as transporting children or handling emergencies.
AV Deployments Begin to Pressure Human Rideshare Earnings
Gridwise Analytics has released its 2026 Autonomous Vehicles Impact Report, analyzing how autonomous vehicle deployments are affecting human rideshare drivers in major U.S. cities. Using data from 2024 through 2025 across Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, the report finds that trips per hour for human drivers are declining nearly twice as fast in AV-active markets compared with the national average, with Los Angeles seeing close to a 10% year-over-year drop. These productivity losses are translating into lower hourly earnings in several cities, even as nationwide pay trends slightly upward.
The analysis also highlights a widening economic gap between autonomous and human-driven rideshare, noting that long-term AV profitability likely requires pricing near $1 per mile, versus about $3.25 per mile for traditional rides. Despite early impacts in certain markets, the report concludes that human-driven rideshare will remain dominant for decades, with estimates suggesting autonomous services may not overtake them in the U.S. until around 2041.
Arbe Robotics Closes $18.5 M Public Offering
Arbe Robotics Ltd. has completed its public offering of 13,225,000 ordinary shares, including full exercise of the underwriters’ over-allotment option, at $1.40 per share, generating approximately $18.5 million in gross proceeds. The company plans to use the funds for working capital and general corporate purposes. The offering was led by institutional investors, including AWM Investment Company, with Canaccord Genuity as sole bookrunner and Roth Capital Partners and WestPark Capital as co-managers. The shares were offered under a SEC-registered Form F-3 registration statement.
Apera AI Releases Vue 9.52
Apera AI has released Apera Vue 9.52 alongside major performance upgrades to Apera Forge, delivering faster setup, deeper diagnostics, and significantly quicker simulation-to-deployment for 4D Vision–guided industrial robotics. The January 2026 update introduces a new Programmable Autopilot in Vue 9.52, giving manufacturers fine-grained control over robotic motion to improve safety, predictability, and cycle times. Users can now customize joint and linear moves, add multiple waypoints, and define motion relative to bins or parts to reduce collisions and optimize picking performance.
Vue 9.52 also streamlines installation and troubleshooting with new 2D and 3D TCP visualization tools that make calibration accuracy easier to validate, range-finding pipelines that improve de-racking performance in unstructured environments, and a robot mechanical error histogram that helps operators quickly identify intrinsic robot inaccuracies. Additional enhancements, such as auto-configure camera networking and automatic pattern board detection, further reduce setup time.
On the simulation and AI training side, Apera Forge now enables up to 4× faster asset training, producing deployment-ready vision programs in as little as six to 24 hours while maintaining greater than 99.9% reliability. Upgraded structured training tools allow users to better mirror real-world cell configurations with flexible bin structures, automated part placement, and multiple origins for complex layouts. Together, the updates strengthen Apera AI’s position in physical AI for manufacturing, helping customers turn challenging robotic stations into high-speed, autonomous production assets with faster deployment and higher uptime.
Faraday Future: FF EAI Robotics Products at NADA 2026
Faraday Future Intelligent Electric will host the FF EAI Robotics Product Final Launch on February 4, 2026, at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show in Las Vegas, marking a major expansion beyond vehicles into embodied AI robotics. The event, themed “Robot & Vehicle +,” will showcase multiple FF Embodied AI (EAI) robot products across three categories and outline how the company’s AI-driven architecture and ecosystem strategy aim to address cost, user experience, and scalability challenges across mobility and robotics applications.
At the launch, Faraday Future plans to unveil new EAI robotic products with live demonstrations, announce pricing and sales and delivery timelines, and offer immersive product experiences. The company will also highlight its FX Super One model and co-creation sales approach, while recruiting preliminary sales partners for its EAI robotics portfolio. A follow-on invitation-only FF/FX Partner Summit will take place on February 5, 2026.
Raytron ADAS Thermal Imaging & Sensor Fusion
Summary: As automakers shift from single-sensor systems to sensor fusion to address nighttime, low-visibility, and all-weather driving risks, Raytron has emerged as a key player in automotive thermal imaging. The company has partnered with more than 15 OEMs, with its thermal cameras deployed across over 20 vehicle models, significantly extending detection range beyond conventional headlights to more than 300 meters. Thermal imaging enables earlier identification of pedestrians, animals, and obstacles in complete darkness and supports safety functions such as thermal-based autonomous emergency braking, already in use on vehicles like the Zeekr 9X. In commercial and industrial vehicles operating in dust, fog, and other harsh environments, Raytron’s long-wave infrared technology provides reliable perception where visible-light cameras and LiDAR degrade, improving safety for mining and logistics operations. As the industry moves toward L4 autonomy, Raytron’s thermal cameras are increasingly integrated into sensor fusion stacks alongside cameras, LiDAR, radar, and other sensors, including deployments in DiDi’s Robotaxi fleet, reinforcing their role in robust perception for intelligent and autonomous vehicles.
Freenow by Lyft and Hamburg Robotaxis
Freenow by Lyft and the City of Hamburg have signed a memorandum of understanding to create Germany’s first public-private framework for integrating Level 4 autonomous taxis into a citywide mobility system. The agreement establishes clear guidelines for moving autonomous vehicles from pilot testing into real-world taxi operations, positioning Hamburg as a model for autonomous mobility in Germany and Europe.
The partnership envisions a hybrid mobility market in which autonomous taxis complement public transportation and traditional taxi services, particularly during off-peak hours and in underserved areas. While AVs are expected to strengthen the overall network, both parties emphasize that drivers will remain central to the system, with new job opportunities emerging in fleet operations, maintenance, and supervision.
The MoU defines guiding principles focused on safety, operational standards, close involvement of existing taxi companies, and data-driven evaluation to support future scaling. Pilot tests will begin in Altona-West, Hamburg North, and Bergedorf, initially linking autonomous taxi services to first- and last-mile connections around public transport hubs. Lyft will select technology and vehicle partners in the coming months, aiming to responsibly integrate autonomous taxis into Hamburg’s broader transportation ecosystem.
Waabi raises $1bn & Partners with Uber Robotaxis
Autonomous driving startup Waabi has raised a combined $1 billion in new funding and secured a strategic partnership with Uber to deploy Waabi-powered robotaxis exclusively on Uber’s ride-hailing platform, marking the company’s first expansion beyond autonomous trucking. The financing includes a $750 million Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus about $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber tied to the deployment of at least 25,000 robotaxis.
While no rollout timeline or regions have been confirmed, North America is a likely starting point. The deal adds Waabi to Uber’s growing roster of autonomous vehicle partners across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. The funding values Waabi at roughly $3 billion, with additional investors including NVentures, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche, and BlackRock.
Founded by former Uber ATG Chief Scientist Raquel Urtasun, Waabi is betting on its “physical AI” platform, which uses a single technology stack for both trucking and robotaxis. The system is trained in a closed-loop simulator that builds digital twins and stress-tests scenarios automatically, aiming to achieve scalable autonomy with far less data, compute, and human labeling than traditional approaches.
VinFast Partners with Autobrains 4 Low-cost, camera-only AVs
VinFast has teamed up with AI company Autobrains to develop a low-cost autonomous driving approach that relies solely on cameras, eliminating expensive LiDAR, radar, and high-definition maps. The collaboration centers on a “Robo-Car” architecture using seven standard cameras and a compact computing chip, aiming to reduce costs and accelerate deployment for mass-market electric vehicles.
The partnership will initially enhance VinFast’s existing Level 2 driver assistance systems, with pilot testing already underway on the VF8 and VF9 models in controlled areas of Hanoi. Trials are expected to expand to other Vietnamese cities and international markets where VinFast operates.
By focusing on camera vision-only autonomy, VinFast is betting on affordability and scalability, but the approach faces major technical challenges in Hanoi’s highly complex, intuition-driven traffic environment dominated by dense flows of motorbikes. Training the system directly in these conditions signals a recognition that autonomy must be adapted to local driving realities, raising open questions about whether camera-based systems can achieve the predictive accuracy needed in such chaotic settings.