TL;DR
Driverless rides may be about to stop being one company's product and become a market. In Austin, Texas, two companies now each log hundreds of thousands of miles a week with nobody behind the wheel, and Tesla's share is climbing fast: an unaudited community tracker counts 438,000 driverless Tesla miles in Austin in the week ending Oct. 18, up 30% in a single week. Competition could make rides cheaper and easier to find, and Tesla says its steering-wheel-free Cybercab reaches Dallas next month (company claim). The gap is still large. Nationally, Waymo drives about seven times as many driverless miles as Tesla, and Tesla's numbers come from its own reports and outside counters, not an audit. But one American city now has a real driverless rivalry, seven weeks after the Cybercab's first public ride.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "Tesla offers robotaxi rides in about ten Sun Belt metros by 2027"; our labeled speculation on what it adds up to; and every source.