robotaxi
In plain wordsA taxi with no human driver: you summon it with a phone app, and a self-driving car picks you up and drives you to your destination.
A driverless vehicle offering paid ride-hailing to the public, operated as part of an autonomous vehicleautonomous vehicle, n.: A vehicle, usually a car, truck or shuttle, that can drive itself, sensing the road, deciding what to do and steering, braking and accelerating with no human driving. fleet at SAE Level 4 within a defined operational design domainoperational design domain, n.: The specific conditions an automated vehicle or robot is designed to work in, such as particular roads, speeds, weather and times of day, outside of which it must not operate on its own., usually a mapped urban service area. Riders summon cars through an app; mature services carry no safety driver, but remote operators assist vehicles that are stuck or uncertain (teleoperationteleoperation, n.: Controlling a robot or machine from a distance, with a person steering it in real time using a joystick, a matching 'puppet' arm, a VR headset or a screen.), and depots handle charging, cleaning and maintenance. As of October 2026 the largest operator outside China was Waymo, with fully driverless service in about ten US metropolitan areas, roughly 500,000 paid rides per week reported in early 2026, and announced plans for London and Tokyo; Baidu's Apollo Go, Pony.ai and WeRide operated in Chinese cities and were expanding abroad, while Tesla, Zoox and others ran smaller or partly supervised services. Economics depend on vehicle and sensor costs, the ratio of remote assistants to vehicles, utilization and insurance. Incidents, including an October 2023 crash in San Francisco that led to the suspension and eventual closure of GM's Cruise, keep safety and transparency at the center of public debate.
The robotaxi stopped two blocks early because the hotel driveway is outside its service area.
Origin
A blend of 'robot' and 'taxi'. Driverless taxis appear in science fiction, as in the 'Johnny Cab' of Total Recall (1990). The word spread in the mid-2010s as nuTonomy (Singapore, 2016), Uber, Waymo and others announced or trialed services; Waymo's Phoenix service became the first fully driverless public robotaxi operation in 2020.
Usage note
Not every service called a robotaxi is driverless: those with a safety driver or onboard monitor are better described as supervised or pilot services, and announcements often precede driverless operation by years.
Related
- autonomous vehicleautonomous vehicle, n.: A vehicle, usually a car, truck or shuttle, that can drive itself, sensing the road, deciding what to do and steering, braking and accelerating with no human driving.
- levels of driving automationlevels of driving automation, n.: A six-step scale, from Level 0 to Level 5, describing how much of the driving a car's automation does and how much the human must still watch the road and be ready to take over.
- operational design domainoperational design domain, n.: The specific conditions an automated vehicle or robot is designed to work in, such as particular roads, speeds, weather and times of day, outside of which it must not operate on its own.
- teleoperationteleoperation, n.: Controlling a robot or machine from a distance, with a person steering it in real time using a joystick, a matching 'puppet' arm, a VR headset or a screen.
- lidarlidar, n.: A sensor that measures distances by firing laser pulses and timing their reflections, building a 3D picture of its surroundings out of millions of points; widely used on robots and self-driving cars.
- mobile robotmobile robot, n.: A robot that travels around by itself — on wheels, tracks, legs, propellers or thrusters — such as a robot vacuum, warehouse cart, delivery robot or planetary rover.
Mentioned in
autonomous vehicleautonomous vehicle, n.: A vehicle, usually a car, truck or shuttle, that can drive itself, sensing the road, deciding what to do and steering, braking and accelerating with no human driving., levels of driving automationlevels of driving automation, n.: A six-step scale, from Level 0 to Level 5, describing how much of the driving a car's automation does and how much the human must still watch the road and be ready to take over., BaiduBaidu, prop. n.: China's largest search-engine company and an early investor in deep learning, which makes the Ernie chatbot and models and runs driverless taxis., mobile robotmobile robot, n.: A robot that travels around by itself — on wheels, tracks, legs, propellers or thrusters — such as a robot vacuum, warehouse cart, delivery robot or planetary rover., teleoperationteleoperation, n.: Controlling a robot or machine from a distance, with a person steering it in real time using a joystick, a matching 'puppet' arm, a VR headset or a screen., TeslaTesla, prop. n.: The American electric-car company led by Elon Musk, whose driver-assistance software, robotaxis and humanoid robot make it a major, and controversial, developer of AI., WaymoWaymo, prop. n.: A company owned by Google's parent, Alphabet, that runs fully driverless robotaxi services in several American cities., operational design domainoperational design domain, n.: The specific conditions an automated vehicle or robot is designed to work in, such as particular roads, speeds, weather and times of day, outside of which it must not operate on its own.