Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe, she said during an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Mawakana had just been asked who she thought was on the list of companies trying to make the roads safer during Monday’s interview.
“I don’t know who’s on that list because they don’t tell us what’s going on with their fleets,” he said.
Prioritizing safety during scale-up work was a big theme during the interview, and Mawakana was sure to bring it up. data recently released by Waymo This shows, by his measurement, that the company’s vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer than pedestrians.
Mawakana declined to say whether he was talking about Tesla specifically, but there are only a handful of companies in the US currently claiming to be working on robotaxi technology.
Tesla publishes quarterly “vehicle safety reports”. But that data only focuses 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 roads. (And the The latest report shows an increase in errors.) Tesla has not released any public information about the safety of its nascent robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.
Other companies in the space are early in development or still testing their technology. Zoox just started offering rides in its custom-built AV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Companies such as May Mobility and Pony AI are similarly launching commercial operations. Aurora, the self-driving truck company, has published a security context.
“I think there’s a responsibility, if you’re going to put vehicles on the road and you’re going to take the driver off the wheel and you’re going to have somebody in another room watching the fleet who can take over their vehicles, it’s your duty to be transparent about what’s going on,” he said. “And if you’re not transparent, then I think you’re not doing what’s necessary to really earn the right to make the road safer.”
Correction: May Mobility has begun offering commercial routes in the U.S. This story has been updated to reflect this.
