China Says “Not So Fast” To Level 3 Driver Assist.
Plus: Wayve raises a $1.2 billion Series D, Nvidia, Microsoft, Uber, and Mercedes on board.
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Now, Here’s What You Need To Know Today.
Top Story
China has announced new draft mandatory safety standards that push L3 systems toward L4-level capabilities. However, a key new requirement dictates that if a driver fails to respond to a takeover request, the L3 system must independently execute a minimal risk maneuver. That’s essentially an L4-level fallback capability. What this means in practice for ADAS developers is yet unknown.
Also mandated: all autonomous vehicles must carry a data recorder, similar to an aircraft’s black box. Pony.ai’s Deputy General Counsel Zion Maffeo alluded to this requirement at a Ride AI 2025 session last year.
The new standards, drafted by China’s MIIT, are proposed to take effect July 1, 2027.
Domestic News
I previewed Tensor’s level 4 self-driving Robocar at CES. The company is working with contract manufacturer VinFast to build the self-designed vehicle, and plans to launch in 2026.
In this week’s Waymo news, the company opened fully autonomous ride-hailing to public riders in four cities simultaneously: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. The company also announced it is beginning to map Chicago and Charlotte.This brings Waymo’s total commercial markets to 10. Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says the company is on track to serve over one million rides per week by the end of this year. However, legislation will need to pass in Springfield before Waymo can operate autonomously in Illinois.
The company also hit 1 million freeway miles, and will begin operating on freeways in more cities. Waymo’s Hyundia Ioniq 5 based robotaxi was also spotted testing around San Francisco and Santa Monica.
Tesla has sued the California DMV to reverse a ruling that found the company engaged in false advertising over its use of the terms “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving”. The state’s Office of Administrative Hearings found that the names could mislead consumers into thinking the cars drive themselves without supervision. Tesla says the state never actually proved that this was the case.
MOIA, Volkswagen’s autonomous ride-hailing brand, is set to launch on Uber’s platform in Los Angeles later this year. MOIA’s ID.Buzz autonomous minivans, developed in partnership with Mobileye, seat up to seven passengers and are designed for on-demand ride-hailing. Initial launches will include human safety monitors, with full driverless operations targeted for 2027.
In autonomous trucking, Bot Auto has partnered with Ryan Transportation, one of the top 20 freight brokers in the US, for fully driverless overnight freight runs between Houston and Dallas. The roughly 200-mile corridor has traditionally been difficult to service due to tight delivery windows and federal hours-of-service limits for human drivers. The driverless runs are slated to begin in Spring 2026.
International News
US based May Mobility has launched an autonomous vehicle pilot in Toyota City, Japan, in partnership with Toyota. The pilot includes a fixed route and an on-demand route to gauge “local interest and business feasibility”. The launch this month adds another Japanese city to May Mobility’s growing footprint in the country, where it has been running autonomous shuttle services at Toyota facilities since late 2024.
Pony.ai achieves “breakeven unit economics” in its second city: Shenzhen. This was achieved with its 7th-gen hardware, so not the ones I was able to try.
Not content with China and the Middle East, Apollo Go is pushing into South Korea, with service beginning in the Seoul metropolitan area. The announcement comes alongside Baidu’s Q4 earnings, which revealed Apollo Go hit a weekly ride peak of over 300,000 trips in Q4 2025 and has now accumulated more than 20 million rides total.
Irish drone startup Manna has signed a partnership with Uber to bring drone deliveries to Europe and the US. The service will launch in Ireland first, where Manna already operates and has completed over 250,000 drone deliveries, before expanding to additional European markets. Uber plans to enter seven new European markets by the end of this year. Manna has secured an EU aviation safety certification that lets it self-authorize flight paths across the EU without seeking permission for each new route, which should make the rollout considerably smoother.
And finally, Singapore’s ComfortDelGro is considering bringing autonomous vehicles to London after reporting record annual revenue of S$5.06 billion (around $4 billion USD) for 2025, a 13% jump year over year. The company already operates Metroline, London’s third-largest bus operator, and has been running autonomous shuttle pilots in Singapore with Pony.ai. CDG is aiming to convert 10% of its global taxi fleet to autonomous vehicles by 2030.
Mergers, Acquisitions & IPOs
Wayve, the London-based autonomous driving startup, has raised $1.2 billion in a Series D round, with Nvidia, Microsoft, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis among its backers. The round gives Wayve a post-money valuation of $8.6 billion. There’s an additional $300 million from Uber contingent on deploying robotaxis in London beginning this year, which could push the total raise to $1.5 billion.
Electric truck startup Harbinger has acquired autonomous driving software company Phantom AI, marking the company’s first acquisition. Phantom AI was co-founded by former Tesla ADAS engineers and built cost-effective Level 2 autonomous systems, including automatic emergency braking and lane support. Harbinger will integrate the computer vision technology into its medium-duty electric and hybrid trucks starting in 2026. As part of the same announcement, Harbinger also inked a separate licensing deal with ZF Group’s ADAS business for ZF Group to license Harbinger’s newly acquired tech to ZF Group’s customers. Further details are not specified.
Swedish autonomous trucking startup Einride has raised an oversubscribed $113 million PIPE ahead of its public debut via a SPAC merger with Legato Merger Corp. The raise exceeded Einride’s original $100 million target and, combined with the SPAC deal, puts total projected gross proceeds at around $333 million. The company is valued at $1.35 billion for the deal, down from the $1.8 billion initially floated when the SPAC was announced last November.
Robot Oopsies
Waymos might be a bit too polite to each other when they get in each other’s ways. There were two separate documented incidents this week.
My proposal: have the two cars play rock paper scissors on the dome display. This way both the cars and pedestrians can see who wins. Whoever wins, gets the right of way. Groups of more than two Waymos can do loser elimination priority. Boom. Solved. Waymo, call me, you’ve got my number.
And finally, someone attached a protest sign to a food delivery robot and it protested in solidarity for 5 minutes.
Alright, that’s it from me… until next week. If you enjoy this newsletter, share it with your friend, colleague, or boss. Thank you for reading; Sophia out!
Nice. Crazy to see Weyve get a lofty $8B valuation from private market while WeRide (with operational L4 robotaxi fleet) gets $2.2 B valuation from public markets. Interesting.