Zoox Takes On The Sun Belt
Plus, DoorDash's Dot finally hits the road.
Welcome to the Ride AI newsletter: The most comprehensive weekly digest of news and intelligence at the intersection of technology and transportation.
Speaker Announcement:
If you know anything about the Chinese AV space, you know about Pony.ai. As a founding member of Pony.ai and someone who was previously at Baidu working on mapping and localization for self-driving systems, Leo certainly knows a thing or two about the Chinese AV space.
Catch him on stage at Ride AI on April 15th. Waitlist tickets are $1050 until March 20th, so act fast before they sell out completely (they’re very close to selling out).
Now, Here’s What You Need To Know Today.
Top Story
Zoox is taking on the Sun Belt, launching testing operations in Dallas and Phoenix. This brings Zoox to ten testing cities, and two passenger operation cities (San Francisco and Las Vegas). The company will deploy its retrofitted SUV testing fleet in central neighborhoods of both cities, initially focusing on manual mapping before progressing to autonomous testing. Zoox says Phoenix will give the company a chance to stress-test sensor and battery performance in extreme heat and dust, while Dallas offers diverse weather and complex road networks.
Zoox is also opening new depots in both cities and a new “Fusion Center” facility in Scottsdale, where the company will run mission control for the region.
Somewhat under the radar and still a bit of a mystery is Zoox’s customer acquisition strategy. The company is planning to open a Zoox-branded “lounge”, seemingly the first of its kind, in San Francisco at 301 Sutter St. The lounge has not been formally announced, though a company spokesperson said Zoox is “continually exploring new opportunities to connect with future riders” as it expands its San Francisco service. Zoox has run pop-up lounges at events before, but this location appears to be at least semi-permanent.
Since launching its shuttle service in Las Vegas and its free Explorers program in San Francisco’s Mission and SoMa district at the end of last year, Zoox has driven more than one million autonomous miles and served more than 300,000 riders.
Domestic News
DoorDash has partnered with the City of Fremont, California to launch Dot, its autonomous delivery robot. Dot is an all-electric, compact sidewalk robot designed for last-mile food delivery. The phased rollout starts with up to 3 chaperoned robots for community testing, then scales to 30 autonomous units in the Downtown/City Center, Centerville, and Irvington areas. Dot made its inaugural delivery on March 5 at Fremont’s annual Restaurant Week kickoff, and the current permit extends through March 2027.
You can check out my preview of Dot at DoorDash’s Dash Forward launch event here.
Virginia is considering a bill that would create a formal path for driverless vehicles to operate in the state. Senate Bill 670, sponsored by Sen. Saddam Salim (D-37), passed the Senate 35-4 and would give the DMV the power to issue autonomous operation certificates. The bill requires safety management plans, quarterly reporting on miles and crashes, a public dashboard, and importantly, prevents local jurisdictions from banning AVs on their own. If it passes, the first vehicles could be on the road by 2028 at the earliest. However, the House has delayed action, with opposition from other automated vehicle companies and automotive manufacturers pushing the decision to next year.
The NTSB reported new incidents of Waymo robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses in Austin. In one January incident, the Waymo stopped for the bus, but after other vehicles passed it, a remote operator incorrectly confirmed that the bus did not have active signals, and the Waymo proceeded. This might be the first confirmed case of a human operator making an autonomous vehicle operate incorrectly by giving incorrect guidance. Waymo recalled its vehicles for a software update in December after Texas officials documented at least 19 illegal school bus passes since the start of the school year.
International News
In hugely exciting news, MOIA, Volkswagen’s autonomous ride-hailing brand, has begun pre-series production of its autonomous ID.Buzz at Volkswagen’s Hanover plant. This is Europe’s first industrially-produced autonomous shuttle with Mobileye technology. The self-driving vehicles go through the same production stages as standard ID.Buzz models, with the addition of a roof module carrying cameras, radar, lidar, and a high-performance computer. MOIA plans to ramp to 500 vehicles through the year, with full series approval and commercial deployment targeted for 2027. The vehicles will be deployed across Europe and the United States.
WeRide and Geely’s Farizon unit have signed an expanded strategic cooperation agreement to deliver 2,000 purpose-built Robotaxi GXRs by the end of this year. As of January, WeRide’s global robotaxi fleet stood at 1,023 vehicles, so this would roughly triple its fleet. The new model is scheduled to roll off the production line in Q3 2026. The companies plan to roll the GXR out across China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe.
Huawei has launched what it calls the world’s highest-spec mass-produced lidar: an 896-line dual-optical-path system. The previous industry standard was 520 lines. The new unit uses two laser receivers with different focal lengths to create a “high-definition picture-in-picture” effect, and can identify objects as small as 14 centimeters from 120 meters away. It will debut on the Aito M9 (starting at ~$69,500) and the Maextro S800 (starting at ~$105,500), with the Avatr 12 and Voyah FE also confirmed.
A VLA Measuring Contest
XPeng CEO and company namesake He Xiaopeng has publicly invited Elon Musk to come experience the company’s VLA 2.0 autonomous driving system. VLA 2.0 is a full rework of XPeng’s autonomous driving stack that drops lidar for a vision-first approach with radar backup. The system is set to roll out later this month. Internally, XPeng has set a goal for VLA’s domestic performance to match Tesla’s FSD by the end of August 2026, although what KPIs that bar is based on is unknown.
As for why Mr. He is so infatuated with Tesla, he had apparently experienced FSD multiple times in the US, including during a late 2025 visit to Silicon Valley where he commented that it was “quasi-L4.” He has spoken multiple times about matching FSD’s performance and pushing VLA 2.0 to L4, however it is important to note that being “quasi-L4” and actually L4 are two very distinct things and should not be conflated with each other in the name of safety.
Volkswagen recently became XPeng’s first external VLA 2.0 customer, making it the first time a major manufacturer has licensed an autonomous driving platform from a Chinese company.
Robot Oopsies
A delivery robot in China complete with a painted-on determined-looking face confidently drives through the site of a major car crash while blasting music. Something about the determined expression and the blasting music in contrast with the scene just gets to me.
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!