A new study finds Waymo's robotaxis are empty for nearly half the miles they drive — the same deadhead rate as traditional ride-hailing services.
Research tracking the fleet concludes that, on this measure, autonomous vehicles offer no structural improvement over human-driven services. The vehicles log empty miles between pickups at roughly the same rate as Uber and Lyft drivers. That pattern — vehicles repositioning or circling without passengers — is the same inefficiency that ride-hailing critics flagged when those platforms expanded into cities a decade ago. The study finds no evidence that smarter routing closes the gap.
Traffic reduction has been a recurring justification for giving AV companies operating room in dense urban areas. If that argument doesn't hold up empirically, the calculus shifts for regulators — particularly in places like San Francisco, where autonomous vehicles have already drawn complaints about blocked bike lanes and delayed emergency responses.
The ride-hailing industry made nearly identical promises in the early 2010s: optimized routing, pooled rides, fewer cars on the road. Research eventually showed the opposite. The AV industry, so far, is tracking the same arc.