Brands Expand Autonomous Taxi Services in 2025

Published 20 January 2025

Author
Nienke Creemers
2 min read

By 2030, autonomous taxis are expected to be a $9bn global market (Statista, 2023). Companies are betting big on robotaxis in 2025, swayed by their promise to reduce road accidents (though their safety is debated), labour costs, and emissions (as most vehicles are electric). But will consumers embrace these driverless vehicles?

  • 2025’s Autonomous Taxi Surge: Several services plan to launch or expand robotaxi fleets throughout 2025. Amazon-owned autonomous taxi service Zoox is aiming to launch in Las Vegas this year and run trials in Austin and Miami. Chinese tech giant Baidu plans to grow its driverless taxi service in Hong Kong, while autonomous car brand Pony.ai (also Chinese) is set to provide self-driving cabs for Hong Kong’s commuting airport staff. And robocar developer Waymo (a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet) will expand into Austin and Atlanta in collaboration with American ride-hailing service Uber. To streamline rides, Uber’s app will offer features for Waymo riders, such as car-boot opening and horn honking.

  • Consumers Debate Self-Driving Taxi Adoption: Not all consumers are ready for driverless taxis. In 2024, 70% of Americans said they were worried about autonomous cars, with 65% saying they’d feel unsafe riding in one, and 66% reporting they’d feel unsafe as a pedestrian around them (YouGov, 2024). Consumer appetite for self-driving taxis is low globally: only 24% of people in the UAE, 20% in India, 18% in Germany, and 17% in Australia and the UK say they can envision themselves using a self-driving taxi (Statista, 2024).

    Nevertheless, the use of such services is growing in cities where they’ve been launched. In California, Waymo picked up around 500,000 passengers in August 2024 – up from fewer than 20,000 in August 2023 (WSJ, 2025).

 

For more on consumers’ driving preferences, see Accelerated Futures: The New Eco-Mobility.