Waymo and Toyota say they will begin testing factory-built bZ4X robotaxis in Japan in 2027, while Waymo and Uber have wound down their Phoenix partnership and Waymo is reportedly exploring an exit from the wider Uber tie-up. The report says the shift from partners toward rivals matters for how riders and investors read both companies' next moves.

Waymo operate in 12-15 cities on

56%

chance

Polymarket

From the stories

Here’s the new Waymo Toyota bZ4X. It is built and retrofitted on existing Toyota production lines in Japan. That’s a lotNic Cruz Patane

Waymo vs Uber: Research comparison

Quick Verdict

Waymo spent the week showing off a Toyota bZ4X it plans to start testing in Japan in 2027, while Uber's loudest moment was a rider's $40 traffic surcharge, which pulled 28,367 upvotes on r/mildlyinfuriating. The evidence shows former partners drifting toward rivalry. Bloomberg and Reuters reported that the two wound down their Phoenix robotaxi tie-up on June 29, 2026, with Uber confirming it was readying a separate, unnamed AV partnership for the city. TechCrunch reported the companies called it a quiet end to a nearly three-year arrangement, and CNBC noted the Waymo vehicles freed up by the split would stay in use making autonomous DoorDash deliveries rather than sit idle. On July 24, Bloomberg and Reuters reported that Waymo was exploring options to exit the wider Uber partnership, citing the Financial Times. Whether that exit has been completed is not established in the gathered sources.

The two run at very different scales:

• Waymo: its Waypoint blog counts over 270 million fully autonomous miles through June 2026.
• Uber: it handles about 40 million trips a day per 60 Minutes Australia. Its August results, per last10k, reported trailing-twelve-month free cash flow above $10 billion.
• Direct overlap: Business Insider cites Yipit estimates putting Waymo at 15% of Waymo/Uber/Lyft gross bookings in San Francisco and Los Angeles in June.

Waymo

Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov announced the Toyota bZ4X partnership on October 30. He wrote, per @dmitri_dolgov (133 likes): "We chose Toyota because of our respect for the legendary safety, reliability, and quality of their vehicles." The waymo.com announcement, dated October 30, frames it as the next phase of an existing collaboration "in pursuit of a world with safer streets and freedom of movement for all." Toyota's newsroom echoes that framing. Electrek and MLQ News add that Toyota will build the autonomous bZ4X vehicles and install Waymo's self-driving hardware at its Takaoka plant in Japan, with the two framing it as Waymo's first step toward overseas expansion. Reuters confirms testing is scheduled to begin in Japan in 2027. Per @waymo (867 likes) and its Instagram reel (62,086 views), that phase is initial operations testing and validation in Japan starting in 2027. That is a planned start, not a running service.

@niccruzpatane (195 likes) noted the car is retrofitted on existing Toyota production lines: "That's a lot of sensors lol." The r/waymo video thread hit 259 upvotes. Overall, sentiment pairs real excitement about expansion with sharp, specific complaints about routing and reliability.

The strengths in this window are reach, safety claims and hiring:

• Footprint:

  • Electrek reports nearly 250 square miles of new coverage across Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • Per Waymo Help, Tampa, San Diego and San Antonio opened to anyone on October 14, with no invite code needed.
  • The Toronto announcement drew 330 points and 450 comments on HN. CBC News Toronto reports it starts with human-operated mapping drives.
  • @BradMunchen (190 likes) puts it bluntly: "Waymo has a real driverless ride-hailing service that's expanding."

• Safety: Dolgov told Manufacturing Digital that Waymo is "up to 20x safer than human drivers when it comes to serious crash injuries." Waymo's own analysis says at least 841 people avoided injuries.

• Utilization: @herbertong (224 likes) pegs Waymo at around 200 miles per vehicle per day.

• Fleet size: Brighter with Herbert (41,075 views) cites Texas DMV registrations of 1,259 Waymo vehicles.

• Funding: Waymo closed $5B in debt financing in October.

• Hiring: this scan picked up 370 Waymo listings on its careers site. They include:

  • 2027 Summer Intern roles in Driver Intelligence.
  • Senior Software Engineer, Staff Software Engineer and Software Engineer openings.
  • Machine Learning Engineer roles in Driver Refinement + Validation.
  • Japan-specific roles such as Marketing Lead - Tokyo.

  Those postings describe the Waymo Driver as "The World's Most Experienced Driver™" and trace it back to the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009.

• Open source: waymo-open-dataset has 3,428 stars and waymax has 1,113.

The weaknesses are concrete:

• Hardware glitch: @beffjezos (153 likes) watched a new Waymo fail to close its door on a steep hill, stuck for 20 minutes: "New door design on Ojai way too complicated."
• Detours:
  • @spiel212 (281 likes) says a Coral Gables to Miami Beach trip suddenly projected nearly two hours. Her daughter rerouted to a safe spot and switched car services.
  • An HN commenter on the Toronto thread had a 9-minute Austin ride "slightly extended" to 45 minutes.
• Inconsistent service: @reincarn8 (22 likes) complains that highways and airport rides keep switching on and off.
• Wrong-way driving: the r/waymo wrong-direction thread drew 264 upvotes.
• Cost: a Moonshots clip posted by Solving The Money Problem (19,825 views) cites a chart putting Waymo's newest vehicle at 40 cents per mile, versus a projected 20 cents for Tesla's Cybercab. That figure comes from an auto-generated transcript.

Uber

Uber reports Q3 earnings on November 4, and Polymarket gives it 18% odds of beating. Yahoo Finance confirms the date and calls 2026 "a terrible year for UBER stock investors." The Polymarket earnings market sits at 18% Yes. Social volume around Uber this month is dominated by rider pricing complaints and driver pay grievances, not product launches.

The strengths are scale, finances and partnerships:

• Finances: CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said in the August results, per last10k: "Gross Bookings grew 22%, Non-GAAP EPS grew 35%, and trailing twelve-month free cash flow exceeded $10 billion for the first time in Uber's history."
• Airports: @dkhos (1,049 likes) says Uber is partnered at 7 Adani airports that handle "a quarter of India's air traffic." He named AI and AVs as next.
• Legal win: Uber won its bid to throw out a UK mass lawsuit by black cab drivers on October 19, per Reuters.
• Engineering: The Pragmatic Engineer's "Uber's AI infra, from the inside" drew 179,109 views.
• Driver flexibility: lou_ber (351,349 views) logged £135 for a day of driving fitted around a baby at home.
• AV strategy: in September, head of autonomous Sarfraz Maredia told Axios: "We want to partner with every single AV provider, technology provider out there." That stance lines up with CNBC's report that Uber is readying a new, unnamed AV partner in Phoenix to fill the gap Waymo left behind.

The weaknesses carry big numbers:

• Traffic pricing: in the $40 surcharge thread, u/Skymaster86 (2,718 upvotes) asked: "Wasn't the entire point of Uber was to establish a set price so you didn't have to succumb to the taxi meter running amok while in traffic?" u/The_Ranger75 (14,487 upvotes) advised a chargeback, conceding "it's nearly impossible to get ahold of a human."
• Halloween surge: sachapvj (1,827 likes) posted a £65.50 Halloween fare.
• Driver pay:
  • On r/uberdrivers, a tolls-not-reimbursed post drew 3,945 upvotes. Its top reply from u/Freefromcrazy (547 upvotes) read: "You pay us to drive at a loss."
  • A $4,110 third-week earnings post drew u/HaikuKnives (128 upvotes): "88 hours a week is absolute insanity."
  • Drivers told FOX5 Las Vegas (724 likes) they are lucky to crack a dollar a mile.
• Safety: the 60 Minutes Australia segment (230,862 views) cites an order for Uber to pay $8.5 million in a rape claim.
• Delivery robots: a retired Penn professor was arrested for blocking Uber Eats robots, per PhillyVoice (74 points on HN).

Head-to-Head

The Bottom Line

Choose Waymo if you live in or visit a metro it actually serves, such as Tampa, San Diego, San Antonio, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Nashville or Orlando, and you prefer a driverless cabin. Accept occasional routing and hardware glitches as the tradeoff. One Orlando rider, godzbully (217 views), said a Waymo trip "COST LESS THAN UBER." That is a single anecdote, not a pricing study. The @spiel212 and @beffjezos reports suggest keeping a backup app handy.

Choose Uber if you need coverage beyond Waymo's footprint, airport pickups or Uber Eats delivery. Budget for surge and traffic adjustments around peak nights like Halloween. The top advice in the 28,367-upvote overcharge thread, from u/The_Ranger75, was to document the trip and file a chargeback if support doesn't fix it. Drivers should read the r/uberdrivers toll and pay threads before counting on headline weekly earnings.

The emerging stack

The gathered evidence does not establish an emerging stack pattern. The one documented combination, Waymo rides booked through Uber, is moving the other way:

• Reuters and Bloomberg report the Phoenix tie-up ended June 29, 2026, with Uber confirming it will launch a separate, unnamed AV partnership in the city. TechCrunch calls it a nearly three-year partnership that ended quietly, and CNBC reports the freed-up Waymo vehicles moved to autonomous DoorDash deliveries instead of sitting idle.
• On July 24, Bloomberg and Reuters reported Waymo was exploring an exit from the wider partnership, both citing the Financial Times. Its current status is unknown in these sources.
• An undated Pinterest pin about "Waymo Autonomous Rides Coming to Atlanta on Uber" cannot be tied to this window.
• Uber's side is Maredia's stated aim, in September, to partner with "every single AV provider," which is an intent rather than a named Waymo arrangement.

In this window, riders and workers mostly treat the two as substitutes. Yipit's 15% Waymo booking-share estimate in San Francisco and Los Angeles points that way. So does CBC Toronto (12,376 views), which reports local taxi and Uber drivers worrying Waymo will take their livelihoods. So does a Threads post from @shacai reading simply "Waymo taking Uber/Lyft jobs."