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Robotaxis are real. Self-driving cars mostly aren't. Here's where America stands, and where Portland fits

Writer: Phil Harpster
Phil Harpster
2 hours ago
11 min read


Driverless America, Part 1 of 2: Where we are now

By Phil Harpster

A Waymo "Ojai" robotaxi at the company's Bayshore depot in the San Francisco Bay Area. Photo: Dllu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (source)

This summer, a Portland Monthly writer watched a "periwinkle minivan with rounded corners and bug-eyed windows" stop at a four-way intersection in North Portland, with two people in safety vests in the front seats. It was a Waymo.

That van wasn't driving itself. Since April 28, Waymo has been manually driving its vehicles around Portland to map the city, about 47 miles up I-5 from Salem. The Portland Bureau of Transportation says mapping with a licensed driver and the self-driving system switched off needs no city permit.

Carrying riders with nobody at the wheel is different. Portland has never issued a permit to test a self-driving car. State law still requires a human operator in most cases, Axios has noted. And a bill that would have changed that died in committee at the Capitol in March.

Whether Waymo's cars ever carry passengers here will be settled at Portland City Hall and in the Legislature in Salem. Elsewhere, fully driverless taxis already carry paying riders in 15 U.S. metro areas. The car in your driveway, meanwhile, still needs you to drive it.

This is the first of two parts. Today: where things stand. Part 2: where it's headed.

A 60-second guide to "self-driving"

On the industry's six-step scale, from Level 0 to Level 5, three levels matter:

  • Level 2: You are driving. The car can steer, brake and accelerate, but you must watch the road, and you are responsible for what happens. Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised), GM's Super Cruise and Ford's BlueCruise are all Level 2.

  • Level 3: The car drives, but only in narrow conditions. You can look away, but you must take over when the car asks. Only one system sold in the U.S. qualifies.

  • Level 4: No driver needed, inside a defined area. That's a robotaxi: Waymo, Zoox and Tesla's driverless Robotaxi rides.

Level 5, a car that can drive anywhere at any time, doesn't exist.

Want the back story? Journalist Alex Davies' Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car follows the industry from a Pentagon-sponsored robot race in the desert to the Google-versus-Uber courtroom fight.

Waymo: far out front

Waymo, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, runs commercial service in 15 U.S. metros. Las Vegas became the 15th on Sept. 14. It has more than 4,000 driverless vehicles in commercial operation. As of March it was giving more than 500,000 paid rides a week, up from 50,000 in May 2024. Its cars have logged more than 270 million autonomous miles through June.

The money keeps coming. Waymo raised $16 billion in February at a $126 billion valuation. On Oct. 8, it said it had closed a $5 billion loan, its first debt financing, with PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street as lead lenders, according to TechCrunch.

Its service list runs from Phoenix, the Bay Area and Los Angeles to Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Denver; in Austin and Atlanta, rides come through Uber. Waymo began driverless testing in Detroit, employees only, on Oct. 6. Its coming-soon list includes Portland, Seattle and Sacramento.

The fleet is mostly Jaguar I-Pace SUVs plus the newer Ojai minivan, built by Chinese automaker Zeekr; Hyundai starts delivering Ioniq 5s this quarter.

The safety case. Waymo says that, compared with human drivers over the same miles in the same cities, its cars have had 82% fewer injury crashes, 95% fewer serious-injury crashes and 93% fewer crashes injuring pedestrians. That is Waymo's own analysis, using human benchmarks it built.

The problems. The record also includes recalls and an open federal investigation.

  • In January, an empty Waymo in Austin stopped for a school bus and asked a remote human helper whether the bus had active signals. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the helper, working in Novi, Mich., answered "No," and the car drove past the bus with its stop arm out. That came a month after a Waymo software recall over earlier school-bus incidents. The investigation is open.

  • In April, an empty Waymo in San Antonio drove into a flooded road at I-35 and Salado Creek and was swept away. Nobody was hurt. Waymo paused San Antonio service for five months and recalled the software nationwide. "Safety is our highest priority, and that unwavering commitment guided every step of the way during this pause," Robert Chen, Waymo's product lead for weather, told Axios when service resumed Sept. 17.

  • In April and May, Waymos drove into closed freeway construction zones in Phoenix and the Bay Area. Waymo recalled 3,871 vehicles, saying there were no injuries or collisions, pulled its cars off freeways and has been bringing them back since July 29. TechCrunch counted it as Waymo's sixth recall.

Tesla: big promises, a smaller reality, real progress

Tesla started its Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025, with a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and later moved monitors to trailing chase cars. In its second-quarter report in July, Tesla listed Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa as "Ramping Unsupervised." In the Bay Area, its cars still carry a safety driver, and Tesla still lacks California's driverless permits. Phoenix and Las Vegas are "Preparations Underway"; Nevada has authorized up to 5,000 Tesla robotaxis in Clark County.

The fleet is far smaller. In Texas, CNBC reported Oct. 3, Tesla has 420 Model Ys and 169 authorized Cybercabs; Waymo has 1,154 vehicles authorized there.

A Tesla Cybercab on display. Photo: JustAnotherCarDesigner / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (public domain) (source)

The Cybercab, with no steering wheel or pedals, began public rides in Austin in early September. CNBC reported mixed early reviews, with long waits, wrong drop-offs and door glitches, but no significant crashes. Federal regulators sent Tesla an audit query about how it certified the Cybercab meets federal safety standards; Tesla got an extension past Sept. 30 to respond.

Tesla AI executive Ashok Elluswamy told investors in July that the cars had driven more than 380,000 miles without a safety operator on board with "zero notable incidents." Tesla also reported 22 crashes to regulators in the service's first year, TechCrunch noted.

Full Self-Driving (Supervised), the version owners buy, is now $99 a month, subscription only. Tesla had 1.48 million active subscriptions at the end of June, and owners have driven it more than 10 billion miles. Tesla says FSD goes 5.5 million miles between major collisions, versus 660,000 for the average driver; researchers dispute its method.

Tesla's own report says FSD "requires active driver supervision and does not make the vehicle autonomous." Regulators and courts are watching:

SIDEBAR: Musk said / What happened

Musk said (January 2026, Davos): Robotaxis would be "very, very widespread" in the U.S. by the end of 2026.What happened: As of October, Tesla lists six metros in Texas and Florida as "Ramping Unsupervised," with small fleets. The Bay Area still has safety drivers. "That hasn't happened yet," CNBC noted.

Musk said (January 2026): About 10 billion miles of FSD data would be needed for safe unsupervised driving.What happened: FSD passed 10 billion miles in May. Owners still must supervise. Musk now says unsupervised FSD for customers will come "probably" in the fourth quarter, when it's legal.

Tesla said (July 2026): Its Cybercab line in Texas has installed capacity of more than 125,000 vehicles a year, with the caveat that "installed capacity ≠ current production rate."What happened: 169 Cybercabs were authorized in Texas as of early October. Musk himself said Tesla needs Cybercab-specific data "before we can put a lot of them on the road."

The trend line: Paid Robotaxi miles fell about 36% in the second quarter, from roughly 1.1 million to 0.7 million.

The rest of the field

What you can actually buy

Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot is the only Level 3 system certified in the U.S. Its own website tells drivers, "You are not driving when the system is active," and Mercedes has said it accepts legal responsibility while the system is driving. The catch: it works only below 40 mph, in daylight, on approved freeways in California and parts of Nevada. Not in Oregon. Mercedes is also replacing it with a Level 2 system in the updated U.S. S-Class.

GM Super Cruise lets you drive hands-free, with your eyes on the road, on mapped highways. It's on about 750,000 vehicles, has logged more than a billion hands-free miles, and costs from $39.99 a month after three free years. GM plans "eyes-off" driving on the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ.

Ford BlueCruise topped Consumer Reports' 2023 ranking. But in March the NTSB found that drivers' overreliance on it contributed to two fatal 2024 crashes, and that its driver monitoring was ineffective. A federal investigation remains open.

Tesla FSD (Supervised) does the most, driving point to point on city streets and highways almost anywhere, with the driver watching.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which tests how well these systems keep drivers attentive, has rated none "Good." Lexus earned "Acceptable," Super Cruise "Marginal," and BlueCruise and Tesla's FSD "Poor," though on 2022–2024 software. "There's no evidence that it makes driving safer," IIHS says of partial automation.

So which brand leads? On the evidence, it depends on what "lead" means:

  • Tesla leads on capability. No other system sold to the public drives in as many places, with as many users and miles. But it's Level 2, you're liable, its safety numbers are self-reported and disputed, and two federal investigations are open.

  • GM has the best-proven hands-free system, rated above Ford's and Tesla's by IIHS, with a billion miles behind it.

  • Mercedes is the only one that accepts responsibility, but only in a traffic jam, under 40 mph, in two states.

Put simply: Tesla does the most, GM watches you best, and Mercedes takes the blame only at a crawl.

Who's in charge?

Unlike Europe, the U.S. lets carmakers certify their own vehicles meet federal standards. NHTSA is rewriting rules that assume a human driver, such as a June brake-pedal proposal, and requires companies to report crashes involving robotaxis and Level 2 systems. In Congress, the SELF DRIVE Act cleared a House subcommittee 12–11 in February and hasn't moved since.

Oregon: the fight runs through Salem

The Oregon Department of Transportation is the state's lead agency on automated vehicles, but its website states that Oregon "does not currently regulate AV testing."

This year's House Bill 4085 would have allowed driverless cars and for-hire robotaxis statewide, and it would have blocked cities from setting their own rules, taxes and fees. Its chief sponsors were Reps. Susan McLain, D-Hillsboro, and Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany.

At a Feb. 9 hearing, Michael Magee, Waymo's West Coast policy manager, said its data, "based on over 127 million miles of passenger operations," showed reductions in serious-injury crashes of 90% compared with human drivers, the Statesman Journal reported. He also said Waymo has no wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which drew criticism from Cassie Wilson of 1000 Friends of Oregon. Portland transportation director Millicent Williams argued the topic was too complex for the short session and should wait until 2027. The League of Oregon Cities opposed the bill because it would strip local authority.

Boshart Davis pushed back: "I don't think that Waymo has to be everything to everyone like some people have suggested." Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth, who raised concerns about hacking, said he expected the bill to pass: "I just hope that as you likely put this into motion, you remember those concerns and try to build a safer system."

The bill died in committee on March 7. Waymo has told Portland officials it will back a new bill in the 2027 session, according to PBOT.

Portland, meanwhile, is writing its own rules. PBOT's draft drew more than 220 public comments. Safety was the top concern, raised in 52% of them. At a July 28 committee meeting, staff floated fleet caps, 50,000 test miles on Portland streets before a company could carry paying riders, suspending a permit after two traffic violations, and a possible fee to help displaced drivers.

"I'd like to have code that simply says all vehicles require a human driver. It would take six words," Councilor Sameer Kanal said, according to OPB. Councilor Mitch Green warned of "a labor displacement problem." Mayor Keith Wilson, quoted in Waymo's announcement, said, "We need every tool to help us meet our Vision Zero goals." A Waymo spokesperson told OPB the company won't operate in Portland without a permit.

The council's Public Works Committee has a briefing scheduled Oct. 13. Separately, The Oregonian reported in August that Waymo planned an expense-paid October trip to Phoenix for Oregon officials to ride its robotaxis, according to a summary of that report.

What it means if you live in the Valley

  • No robotaxi plans for Salem. Waymo has announced none, and Oregon law still requires a human operator in most cases.

  • The key decisions will be made in Salem. The 2027 Legislature will likely decide whether Oregon allows driverless cars and whether cities get a say. Valley lawmakers Boshart Davis and Evans were in this year's debate.

  • You can use Level 2 today. Tesla's FSD (Supervised), Super Cruise and BlueCruise are legal on Oregon roads. Whatever the marketing says, you're the driver, and you're responsible.

Coming in Part 2

Who's likely to win the robotaxi race, when "eyes-off" driving reaches your own car, and when, or whether, a car with nobody behind the wheel could pick you up in Oregon.

Sources

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