In 2024, Self-Driving Cars (Robotaxis) have reached a historic moment, with science fiction gradually becoming reality. In the USA market, $Alphabet-C (GOOG.US)$ Waymo, a subsidiary, has become the most prominent Self-Driving Car company, leading the Industry.

Waymo currently owns about 700 Self-Driving Cars and operates the only commercial Self-Driving Cars service in the USA, Waymo One, which has completed 4 million paid services during the year.

As time goes by, more and more customers have experienced the Waymo One service and have given it very high ratings. Waymo currently provides passengers with over 0.15 million trips each week in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, covering more than 500 square miles of public roads.

In June of this year, Waymo opened its Self-Driving Cars service to all users in San Francisco, having already opened this service to all users in Phoenix, Arizona in 2020, indicating that the company's self-driving fleet can successfully operate in complex urban traffic conditions.

According to reports, Waymo completed a round of financing of 5.6 billion USD in October, with a valuation exceeding 45 billion USD. Waymo's co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov told employees at the all-staff meeting in November that they should actively expand their operations as much as possible, but safety remains the top priority in all their efforts.

A major goal for Waymo in 2025 will be to expand its Self-Driving Cars service to more cities, attract more passengers, and continue to develop new technologies that enable the company's self-driving vehicles to operate in more complex weather and traffic conditions.

Earlier this month, Waymo announced plans to begin testing its Self-Driving Cars in Tokyo, Japan in early 2025, marking the first step towards international market expansion. Waymo stated that it has reached cooperation with the taxi app GO and one of Japan's largest taxi operators, Nihon Kotsu.

Competition is fierce.

Besides Waymo, companies like Tesla and Amazon have heavily invested in Self-Driving Cars technology, hoping to achieve greater returns over a longer period.

$Tesla (TSLA.US)$ The company has announced that its Self-Driving Car Cybercab will achieve mass production by 2026, and it will launch its Online Car-hailing Business in Texas and California in 2025, indicating that competition in the Self-Driving Car field is becoming increasingly intense.

Optimistic investors believe Tesla will fulfill its commitment to Self-Driving technology as early as next year, but critics remain skeptical, partly due to Musk's history of missed deadlines and failure to advance plans as expected.

$Amazon (AMZN.US)$ Zoox, a subsidiary, has launched Self-Driving Cars in San Francisco and Las Vegas, but currently only allows certain users to ride and is not open to the public.

A company spokesperson stated that in March of this year, Zoox expanded the environmental conditions its Self-Driving Cars can handle on public roads, including "night driving, light rain, and driving on wet roads, as well as speeds of up to 45 miles per hour."

Under CEO Aicha Evans' leadership, Zoox aims to provide free rides to more of the public early next year, and then open up to paying customers and the general public.

Although there is a clear demand for Self-Driving Taxis in the USA market, General Motors announced earlier this month that it would exit this Business, which surprised some senior industry observers.

This Detroit Auto Manufacturer will now focus on developing what is known as "personal self-driving cars" instead of self-driving car-hailing services.

As a pioneer in the USA's Self-Driving Cars market, $General Motors (GM.US)$ Cruise, a subsidiary, has made an early start but arrived late. General Motors announced this month that due to the excessive time and cost required to scale the Business and the increasingly fierce competition, it will stop funding Cruise after nearly a decade and over 10 billion dollars invested in research and development. Next, Cruise's technical team will merge with General Motors' team to focus on developing driver assistance systems for personal vehicles.

Editor/Rocky