Ride-hailing company inDrive announced a memorandum of understanding with Pony.ai and Nvidia to test autonomous taxis in Astana, Kazakhstan, in the first half of 2027, initially with safety operators and eventually aiming for fully driverless operation. Pony.ai will provide Gen-7 robotaxis, while Nvidia will supply the Hyperion platform and Halos safety system.
EV maker Rivian has acquired Third Dimension, a UK AI startup that turns images and videos into lifelike 3D worlds, to accelerate development of its autonomous driving systems and support the robotaxis it plans to supply to Uber. Terms were not disclosed.
Chery unveiled a natively integrated Robotaxi for the global market at its 2026 Global Innovation Conference, targeting 100,000 vehicles in global operation by 2030.
On October 20, autonomous driving technology company Neolix announced the completion of a new funding round of nearly $400 million, led by Boyu Capital and the National AI Industry Investment Fund, with participation from Alibaba AEF NextGen Hong Kong Fund, Monolith, Vertex Growth, GAC Capital, and others. Neolix's cumulative financing has exceeded RMB 10 billion, ranking first in the unmanned delivery vehicle industry.
Tesla has started rolling out FSD v14 Lite (Supervised v14.3 Lite, software 2026.38.5.1) to Intel-chip HW3 Model S and Model X, marking the first distilled FSD branch for these older vehicles. The release brings HW4 V14 capabilities to HW3 with improved ramp merging, pedestrian detection, and traffic light handling, though it lacks arrival options, reverse, and smart summon.
XPeng's second-generation VLA achieves capability spanning from L2 to L4, and the same model has been deployed on XPeng's L4-level Robotaxi.
Uber and Chinese autonomous driving company Pony.ai announced an expanded partnership to launch a robotaxi service in London, with testing of Pony.ai's Gen-7 robotaxis slated to begin in the coming weeks. The companies first partnered in May 2025, starting in the Middle East and later expanding to Europe, planning to deploy 2,000 robotaxis. In August 2026, they launched an autonomous ride-hailing service in Zagreb with partner Verne.
Wu Gansha, founder of UISEE, reviewed the company's decade-long journey, saying it focuses on L4 autonomous driving in closed scenarios such as airports, factories and mines, selling unmanned vehicles, autonomous driving software and "AI drivers". In the first half of 2026, revenue was about 163 million yuan, up 64.9% year-on-year, with a gross margin of 52.9%. He also discussed four barriers—safety, efficiency, all-weather operation, and fleet maintenance—and noted that some customers' unit economics have turned positive, referencing the recently announced cooperation with Lufthansa at Munich Airport.
Independent research project DrivingBench had GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1, Grok 4.6, and GPT-5.6 Sol each control a 2022 Toyota Corolla to navigate a cone-defined parking lot course. Astra was the only model to complete the course, finishing 134.7 meters in 5 minutes 22 seconds on its second attempt, consuming about 6.6 million tokens at an estimated cost of $7.74; the best scores for the other models were 45%, 11%, and 6%.
Lyft has partnered with Waymo, with Waymo robotaxis launching on the Lyft app in Nashville this week. Lyft's subsidiary Flexdrive will manage fleet services, infrastructure, and vehicle maintenance, marking Lyft's first true entry into commercial driverless ride-hailing.