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 considered to be on the list of companies trying to make roads safer during Monday’s interview.
“I don’t know who’s on that list, because they’re not telling us what’s happening with their fleets,” she said.
Prioritizing safety while scaling operations was a big topic during the interview, and Mawakana was sure to cite the data Waymo recently released that shows, by its count, that the company’s vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer with respect to pedestrians.
Mawakana declined to say whether she was specifically talking about Tesla, but there are only a few companies in the U.S. right now claiming to be working on robotaxi tech.
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 to be used on highways, where the rate of crashes is lower than on surface streets. (And the latest report shows an uptick in crashes.) Tesla has not released any public data about the safety of its nascent robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.
Other companies in the space are early in the deployment phase or still testing their technology. Zoox has only just begun offering rides in its purpose-built AV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Companies like May Mobility and Pony AI are similarly starting up commercial operations. Aurora, the self-driving trucks company, has published a safety framework.
“I think there is a responsibility, if you’re going to put vehicles on the road, and you’re going to remove the driver from behind the wheel, and you’re going to have someone in some other room observing the fleet who can take over their vehicles, it is incumbent upon you to be transparent about what’s happening,” she said. “And if you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the road safer.”
Correction: May Mobility has started offering commercial rides in the U.S. This story has been updated to reflect that.
