UN Approves AV Global Regulations
Plus: Zoox show off scaleable robotaxi, Lyft draws a hard line against camera-only AVs, and China's robotaxis rush to IPO
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Top Story
A UN vehicle-standards forum has approved the first global regulations for fully autonomous driving systems, a framework backed by the US, China, the EU, Japan, the UK, and Canada. The rules, adopted by UNECE’s World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, set common safety requirements and a shared validation method for ADS vehicles, and require automated driving to match or exceed a competent human driver. The main points of the new standards are:
● Safety Management System: Manufacturers must implement audited, lifecycle‑wide safety governance and processes.
● Credible testing requirements: Test environments, including virtual toolchains, must meet strict credibility criteria.
● Safety Case: Companies must provide structured evidence that their ADS poses no unreasonable risk.
● In‑service monitoring & reporting: Continuous performance monitoring and reporting ensure real‑world safety oversight.
● Data Storage System for Automated Driving: Vehicles must record safety‑relevant ADS data.
The forum also amended roughly 90 existing UN regulations so they still apply to vehicles without traditional driver controls.
It enters into force in about a month. Most AV players have already implemented these requirements, but the point is to head off a patchwork of national rules and give manufacturers one bar to clear across major markets, though how each country actually adopts it is the open question.
The US moved in the same direction the same week. NHTSA has begun rulemaking to drop the requirement for manual brake pedals in vehicles designed to be driven only by automated systems, its fifth update to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The change to FMVSS No. 135 removes the mandate for hand- or foot-operated brake controls in cars that will never have a human driver, part of the Trump administration’s broader AV Framework that’s also rethinking windshield wipers, mirrors, and transmission-shift rules for driverless vehicles. Existing rules still apply to AVs that keep manual controls, and every vehicle must still meet the same stopping-distance standards through alternative testing. This would certainly be a huge boon for purpose-built vehicles like Zoox’s robotaxi and Tesla’s Cybercab, neither of which has a wheel or pedals. Until now those designs needed individual exemptions, which NHTSA caps at 2,500 vehicles a year.
Domestic News
Zoox has unveiled the next evolution of its purpose-built robotaxi, a production-intent vehicle it’ll soon build at large scale, with the aim to eventually ramp production to 100 cars a week.
The carriage-style, steering-wheel-free cabin gets a lighter interior to make a forgotten phone or keys easier to spot, more padding and ergonomic curves in the headrests and seats, which are now two-piece instead of the previous one-piece foam, a “more vivid” touchscreen, bigger cupholders, and a fluted wireless charging pad. Outside, the bidirectional reflectors that mark front from rear have been relocated for visibility, and the doors get a new speaker and mic for two-way audio between riders, other road users, Zoox Support, and first responders.
Zoox calls this its production-intent vehicle and says it’ll move into large-scale production at its Hayward, California serial facility, with the capability to build up to 100 robotaxis a week, subject to regulatory approval. The new cars join the fleet across Zoox’s markets and reach riders later this year. After years as the most distinctive but least deployed of the major robotaxi players, Zoox is finally signaling it’s ready to scale.
Separately, Zoox CTO and co-founder Jesse Levinson has said during a technical deep-dive that public airport access in Las Vegas and paid rides are both coming soon. In a Reddit reply, Levinson said the LV airport is ready and already open to Zoox employees for pickup and drop-off, but that overwhelming demand on and near the Strip has the company holding off on public airport access until it can charge for rides, which he expects to be “quite soon.” Zoox rides are free today.
Waymo’s latest safety analysis now covers more than 220 million fully autonomous miles, and found the Waymo Driver was involved in 94% fewer crashes causing serious or fatal injuries than human drivers in the same areas. The data runs through March 2026 across five geographies, including Atlanta for the first time. Against the human benchmark, Waymo also logged 82% fewer airbag-deployment crashes, 82% fewer injury crashes, and 93% fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians. Atlanta stood out: across 5.4 million miles there, a typical driver would have been expected in roughly 1.2 serious-or-fatal-injury crashes. The Waymo Driver was in none. At over 4 million miles a week, Waymo estimates that adds up to one fewer serious-injury crash every eight days.
The numbers landed the same week Waymo opened its Nashville service to everyone. Anyone in the city can now hail a fully driverless ride through the app, after tens of thousands of riders came off the interest list since April. Waymo is already testing at Nashville International Airport and will add Lyft-app hailing later this year.
In the other direction, Waymo and Uber have quietly ended their Phoenix partnership, with Waymo robotaxis no longer available on Uber’s app. The disappearance was first noticed by users on social media, before both companies confirmed it to TechCrunch as the planned end of a pilot that ran since 2023. The roughly dozen vehicles in the program have been folded back into Waymo’s own Phoenix fleet, a switch Waymo says actually happened in May.
It’s not the end of Waymo and Uber, though. Their cars are still exclusively on Uber in Austin and Atlanta, where hundreds run, and Uber calls Phoenix an intentionally limited first pilot that taught it how to scale those markets. Uber says it’s now prepping a separate, unnamed AV partner in Phoenix. The split is notable mostly because Phoenix was the only city where Waymo operated both on its own app and through Uber, and because the two are set to compete head-to-head in London later this year.
NHTSA has begun rulemaking to drop the requirement for manual brake pedals in vehicles designed to be driven only by automated systems, its fifth update to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The change to FMVSS No. 135 removes the mandate for hand- or foot-operated brake controls in cars that will never have a human driver, part of the Trump administration’s broader AV Framework that’s also rethinking windshield wipers, mirrors, and transmission-shift rules for driverless vehicles. Existing rules still apply to AVs that keep manual controls, and every vehicle must still meet the same stopping-distance standards through alternative testing. It’s a real unlock for purpose-built vehicles like Zoox’s robotaxi and Tesla’s Cybercab, neither of which has a wheel or pedals. Until now those designs needed individual exemptions, which NHTSA caps at 2,500 vehicles a year.
Lyft has updated its AV safety framework to require multi-sensor redundancy, cameras plus radar plus lidar, on any fully driverless vehicle on its platform, effectively shutting out camera-only systems. CEO David Risher wrote in a Fortune op-ed that overlapping sensor types fail in different conditions (cameras get blinded by glare and fog, radar struggles with stationary objects, lidar degrades in heavy rain), so a single-sensor stack can go blind all at once. Risher framed the new policy as provisional, and said Lyft will revisit if safety data shows single-sensor systems perform comparably, or if a credible authority like NHTSA sets a driverless standard one can meet.
International News
A UN vehicle-standards forum has approved the first global regulations for fully autonomous driving systems, a framework backed by the US, China, the EU, Japan, the UK, and Canada. The rules, adopted by UNECE’s World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, set common safety requirements and a shared validation method for ADS vehicles, and require automated driving to match or exceed a competent human driver. The main points of the new standards are:
Safety Management System: Manufacturers must implement audited, lifecycle‑wide safety governance and processes.
Credible testing requirements: Test environments, including virtual toolchains, must meet strict credibility criteria.
Safety Case: Companies must provide structured evidence that their ADS poses no unreasonable risk.
In‑service monitoring & reporting: Continuous performance monitoring and reporting ensure real‑world safety oversight.
Data Storage System for Automated Driving: Vehicles must record safety‑relevant ADS data.
The forum also amended roughly 90 existing UN regulations so they still apply to vehicles without traditional driver controls.
It enters into force in about a month. Most AV players have already implemented these requirements, but the point is to head off a patchwork of national rules and give manufacturers one bar to clear across major markets, though how each country actually adopts it is the open question.
Taipei will start trialing autonomous buses on 15 dedicated bus lanes in the second half of 2027, the back end of a three-phase rollout the city’s mayor has laid out. Taiwan is well known to have a relatively unsafe traffic system. And as Taipei is my hometown, watching the city spend years not doing anything to embrace autonomous technology has been painful. Now, with Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s plan starting later this year, shuttle trials in enclosed areas like Taipei Zoo and AV demonstration zones at Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (where Nvidia’s new Taiwan headquarters will be) will open before mid 2027. The pilots will start out with uncrewed cleaning and watering vehicles before progressing to passenger shuttles. Once established, bus-lane pilots will begin once roads, traffic signals, and sensors are upgraded.
No vehicle suppliers have been named yet, however the images provided by the Taipei Department of Transportation show a Turing bus in an exclusive-use bus lane. Turing is a Taiwanese company focused on self-driving technology, not to be confused with Turing, the Japanese company focused on self-driving technology.
WeRide, Geely Farizon, and Hong Kong bus operator Kwoon Chung will build a purpose-built right-hand-drive robotaxi, targeting one of the few real gaps in the global market. The vehicle is based on WeRide’s production-ready GXR platform, with commercial service starting in Hong Kong before expanding to other right-hand-drive markets like Singapore, the UK, Japan, and Australia. WeRide and Geely Farizon already build the GXR together (it’s gone driverless in Beijing and Guangzhou), so this mainly adds a right-hand-drive variant that lets WeRide serve both traffic systems. The company operates in 40+ cities across 12 countries and plans to grow its fleet to 2,600 vehicles by the end of 2026 and tens of thousands by 2030. Right-hand-drive markets have been underserved by robotaxi makers, so being early there is a genuine edge.
May Mobility and Chinese ride-hailing giant CaoCao have signed a partnership to bring robotaxis to Europe, with CaoCao owning and operating the fleet and May supplying the autonomy. The two will run joint feasibility studies and pilots in key markets, starting in Europe. CaoCao, a Geely-backed platform, unveiled its “RoboX” strategy on June 18 and has set a goal of 100,000 robotaxis by 2030, while May currently runs autonomous services in the US and Japan and pitches an in-situ system that reasons through unfamiliar roads to adapt to new markets. It’s May’s first real overseas push, and it slots into a busy week of Chinese-platform expansion abroad, alongside WeRide’s Hong Kong deal and CaoCao’s own separate Abu Dhabi fleet announcement.
Waymo has registered a German entity, Waymo Germany GmbH, signaling Europe is next after London and Tokyo. The unit was registered June 15 out of Google’s Munich office, with a stated purpose of running autonomous ride-hailing and supporting third parties that offer it. Nothing’s imminent, though it’s still an aggressive signal for expansion, as Waymo’s commercial London service is due later this year, and a German base would push it deeper into Europe, where Chinese players like WeRide and Pony.ai have been moving fast.
Momenta has kicked off a Hong Kong IPO seeking up to $751 million, the latest Chinese autonomous-driving firm to rush for a listing there. The GM-backed company, which also supplies driving software to Mercedes, Toyota, BYD, and Audi, is pricing at a roughly $9 billion valuation, with trading expected July 8 and about 60% of proceeds earmarked for R&D and 20% for speeding up its robotaxi rollout. Chinese AV players have been racing to list in Hong Kong, with WeRide and CaoCao already trading there. I’m speculating here, but the reason could be that they want to lock in capital while the window is open, before Beijing tightens its grip on offshore and overseas listings.
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!