This month in Las Vegas, one of the big robotaxi companies, Zoox, owned by Amazon, now takes paying customers in cars with not only no driver, but no steering wheel or brake pedals. <\/p>\n
In a recent trip to Los Angeles, I took my first-ever Waymo \u2013 driverless cars that now number in their thousands in cities from San Fransico to Atlanta. <\/p>\n
![\"Researches](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/researches-say-autonomous-vehicles-could-be-the-key-to-makin-VBRETGN375H7XPLIX6COKXKG5I.png\")
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Researches say autonomous vehicles could be the key to making roads safer. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
In many ways, it works just like booking a rideshare \u2013 you select your destination, your pickup point. You watch the little car icon get closer. Then it pulls up. <\/p>\n
With no driver. <\/p>\n
The trip to the mall in Beverly Hills was quick, quiet and safe \u2013 but also freaky as anything. Seeing the steering wheel move by itself will take some getting used to. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s this tech that some of the biggest companies on the planet are making multi-billion-dollar bets on. <\/p>\n
Tesla is racing ahead with development of the Cybercab, Alphabet is boosting Waymo numbers, and Amazon has Zoox. <\/p>\n
One tech giant, Nuro, has signed a mega deal with Uber, which is also getting into the robotaxi game. <\/p>\n
Nuro co-founder Dave Furgusson (who also happens to be a Kiwi from Wellington) told me his company is effectively developing the \u2018brains\u2019 behind the vehicle. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is we can take any car, and we can put on some pretty low-cost sensors, add some additional compute, and then we provide the driver that can very, very safely and effectively drive that vehicle on any road,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAbout a year and a half ago, we signed a pretty major partnership with Uber, where we and Uber and Lucid, which is an electric vehicle company in the US, are building a custom robotaxi.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/us-correspondent-logan-church-hoping-hell-reach-is-destinati-3I4WZBGLONBHZDRN45L2RHBIXQ.png\")
<\/p>\n
US Correspondent Logan Church hoping he’ll reach is destination. Spoiler alert – he was absolutely fine. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
They plan to deploy tens of thousands across the US starting from later this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWaymo has obviously already begun to scale. I think they’re in over 10 cities now across the US, have thousands of vehicles. We intend to scale pretty rapidly with Uber.\u201d <\/p>\n
He saw a day soon when people would not only privately own an autonomous vehicle, but when they weren\u2019t using it, it could turn into a robotaxi and join a network like Uber. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou will be able to own a vehicle that when you get in it, or your family gets in it, or you want to send it for errands, it can operate fully autonomously,\u201d he said. \u201cWe also are very convinced that a significant number of owners of those vehicles will choose to let them go operate in a network like Uber. And so, they will be able to have their vehicle go earn money for them.\u201d <\/p>\n
The biggest impediment to that vision being achieved was no longer technology, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we’re launching is already at the point where we believe it is superhuman performance,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the big challenge is how do you scale? How do you go from a couple hundred vehicles to a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands to millions worldwide?\u201d <\/p>\n
How safe are cars with no drivers? <\/p>\n
![\"There](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/there-are-more-than-four-thousand-robotaxis-across-america-m-6CVIZMU6DVFPHELCUE3IY27CDE.png\")
<\/p>\n
There are more than four thousand robotaxis across America – most of them produced by Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet (Google’s parent company). (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
As I was driven around Los Angeles by a Waymo in my first trip, I couldn\u2019t help but stare at every oncoming car in the other lane or passing cyclist and pray. <\/p>\n
There have been well-documented instances of cars making weird decisions \u2013 like driving en masse like a herd down a cul-de-sac in Atlanta in May (Waymo said it was a \u2018routing problem\u2019 and apologised to residents), to a car driving over a firework set off on the street during this year\u2019s July 4 celebrations in San Fransico. <\/p>\n
Prakash Ranjitkar is a civil and environmental engineering expert at the University of Auckland, and he says there are clear safety benefits from having autonomous vehicles on the roads. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we look at accidents, in the US and other countries, people have analysed the data and what they found in most of the cases is that accidents are caused due to the human factor \u2013 more than 90%. What autonomous vehicles do is they take the human out of the equation. As a human we get distracted, we speed, we get tired and sometimes make poor decisions,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAutonomous vehicles don\u2019t get tired, don’t get distracted, and are constantly monitoring what is happening around them. The biggest factor for accidents is taken out of the equation. We can reduce the number of crashes.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"These](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/these-zoox-robotaxis-dont-have-steering-wheels-or-brake-peda-E3XQ54HEBNGTVASZBDAT2IBJXY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
These Zoox robotaxis don’t have steering wheels or brake pedals – paying customers can now use them in Las Vegas. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
The technology wasn\u2019t perfect, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially under a complex situation when they are driving under mixed traffic conditions, when they have to deal with other human drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. That is more challenging \u2013 and that is where we are doing research. <\/p>\n
\u201cAutonomous vehicles are not a silver bullet, but if we introduce this technology carefully, alongside safer roads, better infrastructure, better regulation, this technology has the real potential to bring down the number of accidents,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
NZ-specific challenges <\/p>\n
There were challenges that New Zealand would need to overcome to see these types of vehicles deployed on Kiwi roads \u2013 regulation is one of the big ones. <\/p>\n
While some autonomous functions are allowed in vehicles in New Zealand \u2013 for example Tesla\u2019s autopilot \u2013 it is still a legal requirement to have a driver in the driver seat. <\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently we don’t have clear rules if something goes wrong, who is liable,” said Prakash Ranjtkar. \u201cWe don’t have a safety standard. How we deal with cybersecurity and how these vehicles can operate on the public roads.\u201d <\/p>\n
Transport Minister Chris Bishop told 1News that while he knew there was some desire to change some of the rules, it was not an \u201cimmediate priority\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI’m aware there is a bit of interest, it’s a fast-moving field as we know, so I’m prepared to have a look at it, but I can’t do everything at once.\u201d <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Dave Fergusson at Nuro said that New Zealand was in their deployment plans \u2013 even if he wouldn\u2019t be drawn on a date. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would say it’s definitely years, but hopefully not too many years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He was confident regulation change was possible. <\/p>\n
I think one thing that we found really encouraging over many, many years is New Zealand has continued to be a really thoughtful regulatory partner for both self-driving, but in general, it’s why we have even rockets there. We have a lot of drones,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can’t wait to have my parents ride in one of our vehicles in the next couple of years in Wellington.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1News US Correspondent Logan Church has been hopping into driverless cars in America, and asking the tech giants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,64,69,145,112],"class_list":["post-576897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north-america","tag-nz","tag-technology","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}