Zevo wants to add robotaxis to its ride-sharing fleet, starting with newcomer Tensor

Self-driving cars are no longer limited to the realm of science fiction thanks to companies like Waymo deploying commercial robotaxi services in multiple cities. A number of automakers, large and small, are trying to bring the same level of autonomy to personally owned vehicles over the next few years.

If that happens, what kinds of things can you do with a personal AV? Maybe you’ll be able to send it out to pick up food or run errands — the hope of a company called Autolane. Or, if you’re Tesla CEO Elon Musk, you’d think owners would want to spread their cars out into the world to offer rides for other people, creating an almost neat and easy side business.

Hebron Scher, co-founder of Dallas-based Zyvo, is looking to capitalize on all of the above. The company has been operating an electric-only, car-sharing fleet for a little over a year, and is now adding robotaxis, starting with a new company called Tensor.

Tensor is kind of an odd duck. This type of startup emerged earlier this year from a former China-based company called AutoX, and it boldly claims that it will be the first company to sell a fully self-driving car to ordinary consumers — in 2026, at least. Zevo says it will buy up to 100 Tensor cars and add them to its network.

There aren’t many details about timing, and Tensor still needs to show it can build cars of any size and reliability, huge hurdles that have held back many other newcomers in recent years. If successful, Zevo customers will essentially be able to borrow Tensor AVs in what amounts to a kind of decentralized bot service.

This announcement is similar to many of the big, ultimately unfulfilled promises made a decade ago, when the hype around self-driving cars first peaked. But with real robotaxis on the roads now, the idea seems like a mere idea a little More concrete this time.

“Tensor’s vision is to build a future in which everyone owns their own artificial general intelligence — a personal AGI that enables more time, freedom and independence,” Hugo Fozzatti, chief business officer at Tensor, said in a statement. “For us, this partnership with Zevo is not just a mass sale of our vehicles, but it also enables individuals and small entrepreneurs to participate and benefit from the autonomous vehicle business in this era of artificial intelligence.”

This wouldn’t be Scheer’s first bet on an unproven company. In October, Zevo announced a non-binding order for 1,000 vans from perpetually at-risk startup Faraday Future. Faraday, which struggled for a decade to make and sell its FF91 luxury SUV, has recently turned to importing affordable electric trucks from China and assembling them in the United States. The company is supposed to assemble the first of these trucks later this month.

Scheer’s willingness to bet on these companies stems from two reasons. One is cost: Tensor and Faraday Future have poor and non-existent performance records, respectively, so they are willing to make an attractive deal. More importantly, Scheer said, these companies are more willing than major OEMs to allow Zevo to integrate closely with their vehicles’ software — a critical factor if you’re going to allow peer-to-peer sharing, especially in robotaxis.

Not only is it difficult to make legacy automakers similarly agile, but Scheer said their “technology obsession is bad.” For newcomers, he said, “the synergy between startups and startups, kind of mingling, mingling together, saying: ‘Let’s build a solution side by side…’ I think I really enjoyed that experience.”

Scheer portrays the Tensor deal as a win-win for both companies: Tensor gets an early customer and a chance to prove that its robotic cars are real and can do what they promise; Zevo gets a good deal and this deep software integration.

But he admits it’s a “calculated risk.”

“I think that’s what makes America great, you know, the fact that we encourage startups to take risks,” he said.