Autonomous vehicles

9 entries between May 2016 and June 2025, 1 turning point.

Turning points

  1. Uber test car kills Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona

    A modified Volvo XC90 run by Uber Advanced Technologies Group, driving autonomously with a safety operator aboard, struck and killed Elaine Herzberg as she walked a bicycle across Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona, on 18 March 2018 at roughly 38 mph.

Every entry

  1. Tesla starts a limited robotaxi service in Austin

    Tesla began a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas on 22 June 2025 with about 10 Model Y cars running Full Self-Driving software and a human safety monitor in the front passenger seat. Riders and reporters recorded wrong-way driving and drop-offs in intersections.

  2. Waymo’s robotaxi rides roughly triple to about 14 million

    Waymo’s driverless service averaged roughly 269,000 paid trips a week over the year while working toward a stated target of a million a week, ending it with an estimated 2,500 vehicles in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and other cities, and about 14 million rides.

  3. Tesla sends Full Self-Driving Beta to a small group of drivers

    Tesla began sending a Full Self-Driving beta update on 20 October 2020 to a small group of drivers it called expert and careful, adding city-street steering, turns and lane selection to existing highway Autopilot features.

  4. Waymo opens driverless robotaxi rides to the Phoenix public

    Waymo opened fully driverless Waymo One rides, with no human safety driver, to the general public in the Phoenix metropolitan area on 8 October 2020, starting with existing riders and widening access through its app over the following weeks.

  5. Waymo One begins paid robotaxi rides near Phoenix

    Waymo opened Waymo One on 5 December 2018, a ride-hailing app offering trips in autonomous minivans around Phoenix, including Tempe, Mesa, and Chandler. A trained safety driver sat behind the wheel, and access was limited to members of an earlier rider program.

  6. Tesla on Autopilot kills Apple engineer Walter Huang

    Walter Huang, an Apple engineer, died on 23 March 2018 when his Tesla Model X, with Autopilot engaged, accelerated into a highway crash barrier at the US-101 interchange in Mountain View, California. Investigators later found no collision warning sounded and no automatic braking.

  7. Uber test car kills Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona

    A modified Volvo XC90 run by Uber Advanced Technologies Group, driving autonomously with a safety operator aboard, struck and killed Elaine Herzberg as she walked a bicycle across Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona, on 18 March 2018 at roughly 38 mph.

  8. Uber acquires the self-driving truck company Otto

    Uber said it had bought Otto, a San Francisco startup building self-driving retrofit kits for freight trucks, in a deal reported at up to $680 million in Uber equity. Otto’s co-founder Anthony Levandowski took charge of Uber’s self-driving work.

  9. Driver dies in a Tesla running on Autopilot in Florida

    Joshua Brown, 40, died when his Tesla Model S, driving on Autopilot, struck a tractor-trailer crossing a Florida highway that neither he nor the system saw against a bright sky. Tesla disclosed the crash on 30 June, the day regulators opened an inquiry.