Waymo co-CEO says Robotaxi companies must do more to prove safety

Waymo co-CEO Tekdra Mawakana said during an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 that other companies working on self-driving vehicles need to do more to prove that their technology is safe.

Mwakana was just asked who she considers to be on the list of companies trying to make roads safer during an interview on Monday.

“I don’t know who is on that list, because they don’t tell us what is happening to their fleets,” she said.

Prioritizing safety while scaling operations was a big topic during the interview, and Mawakana was sure to cite data Waymo recently released that shows, by its calculations, the company’s vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer in relation to pedestrians.

Mawakana declined to say whether she was talking specifically about Tesla, but there are only a few companies in the United States at the moment that claim to be working on robotaxi technology.

Tesla publishes quarterly “Vehicle Safety Reports.” But this data focuses only on the use of the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance technology, which is designed for use on highways, where the accident rate is lower than on surface streets. (The latest report shows a slight increase in crashes.) Tesla has not released any public data about the safety of its emerging robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.

Other companies in this space are still early in the deployment phase or still testing their technologies. Zoox has just begun offering rides at its purpose-built AV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Companies like May Mobility and Pony AI have similarly started commercial operations. Aurora, the self-driving truck company, has published a safety framework.

“I think there’s a responsibility, if you’re going to put vehicles on the road, and you’re going to remove the driver from behind the wheel, and you’re going to have someone in another room monitoring the fleet and they can take over their vehicles, then you have a duty to be transparent about what’s going on,” she said. “And if you’re not transparent, in my view you’re not doing what’s necessary to actually earn the right to make the road safer.”

Correction: May Mobility has begun offering commercial rides in the United States. This story has been updated to reflect that.