Ground Signal

Robotaxis are a real estate business. Every city launch needs a depot with chargers, cleaning bays and repair staff. Nashville's new one is 80,000 sq ft. I track where these sites go, how much power they need and which cities are writing rules for them. Follow for a new depot or permit every weekday.

Tesla filed permits for 16 V4 Supercharger stalls at its Pond Springs service center in Austin. Not open to the public. Its night-shift job posting there already covers cleaning, inspecting and charging robotaxis. Depot and chargers in one spot. No opening date in the plans.

D.C.'s rewritten robotaxi bill caps each operator at 200 cars operating at once and 800 citywide. Waymo has three D.C. sites where it says the fleet would be charged and serviced. At the cap that's about 67 cars per site. In San Antonio it runs about 100 cars out of one depot.

Depot Watch: Uber launched Uber Parking today in 15 U.S. cities, built on SpotHero's network of 13,000+ garages, lots and valets. Uber says those spots could also stage robotaxis between trips, so cars wait near riders instead of driving back to a depot empty.

Zoox will send data-collection fleets to Europe and Asia in early 2027. Targets are London, other EU cities, Korea and Japan. First come sensor-equipped Toyota Highlanders, not the purpose-built cab. Zoox runs about 150 robotaxis in the U.S. while Hayward scales production.

Flexdrive opened an 80,000-square-foot Waymo depot in Nashville in October to charge and maintain hundreds of cars, with more than 70 jobs. Lyft gets paid per available vehicle out of that depot. Fleet growth and airport rides are next by year-end.

NYC's Intro 94 would let the TLC set the number of robotaxi licenses. It has sat in Shaun Abreu's committee since January. On Friday, Speaker Julie Menin flagged jobs and congestion. That comes down to fleet size. Do robotaxis fit under the 13,587-medallion cap, or add cars?

Depot Watch: Waymo has a staging lot across Lady Bird Lake from downtown Austin. A field report counted about 30 cars, with room for 40 to 50 using overflow. It runs on temporary power, no permanent chargers, and a worker plugs in each car. The main depot is 6.1 miles away.

Sadiq Khan wants a cap on London robotaxis. The Assembly transport committee wants more: TfL issuing the permits once full AV Act rules land in 2027, with "empty miles driven" as a core reporting metric. Those are trips to chargers and depots, so fleet parking gets regulated too.

Milence opened its fifth Belgian truck hub last week, in Temse between Antwerp and Ghent. Eight bays, and four have megawatt chargers up to 1.5 MW. Its three earlier MCS sites in Antwerp, Zwolle and Landvetter got one 1.2 MW unit each. Temse is the first with four.

Aurora's truck build at Roush is about six weeks behind plan. Parts supply, component quality and end-of-line testing slowed the first month. It now targets 20 driverless trucks a week by early December and 200+ by end of February. Right now the limit is the factory, not lanes.

Charger Logistics wants to buy up to 500 Aurora driverless trucks for 2027 and 2028. The shift is who carries the capital. Charger would own the trucks and pay Aurora for the driver as a service. It's a non-binding MOU. 500 is under 2% of Aurora's 30,000-truck goal for 2030.

Depot Watch: 180 Charles St, Malden, Mass. Waymo leased the whole 65,000 sq ft building, two blocks from Malden Center station. The owner marketed it with a 2,000-amp power upgrade. Waymo hasn't said how it'll use it. Massachusetts still has to legalize driverless rides first.

Waymo got Las Vegas airport access this week, the second robotaxi service cleared at LAS after Zoox. Nevada approved fares in August, but the curb took a separate sign-off from Clark County Aviation. Pickups run from dedicated AV zones on the ground level of Terminals 1 and 3.

Waymo's first Toronto riders come in 2028, but the depot deal is already signed. Element Fleet, which manages 1.5M+ vehicles, will run charging, cleaning and maintenance on site, the same setup Moove has in Phoenix and Avis has in Dallas.

NHTSA proposed new lighting rules today for cars with no steering wheel or pedals. They'd drop the manual turn signal, hazard and high-beam switches. Robotaxis could add optional cyan lamps that light only when software is driving. Comments run 30 days from publication Oct 26.

Depot Watch: Santa Monica's Main Library garage. The council voted 6-0 to negotiate letting Zoox park up to 150 robotaxis in city lots, mainly the library's first underground level. The city expects $500k+ a year. It's parking only. Zoox is setting up charging elsewhere.

Amazon's trucking partners in Germany just got wider access to Aral pulse's ~35 e-truck charging sites. That includes the A10 megawatt park near Berlin. Six drive-through bays, each with an MCS and a CCS plug. 20 to 80% takes about 30 minutes.

D.C.'s likely next mayor wants the Council to hold Waymo legislation until next year. The bill still on the table would cap operators at 200 vehicles and keep commercial service off until 2028. Waymo has already lined up three charge-and-service sites in the District while it waits.

Waymo opened fully driverless rides to everyone today in San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa. San Antonio International Airport is in the service area from day one of public access. Waymo says hundreds of thousands of people in these cities already rode while access was limited.

Tesla says Megacharger projects in Southern California can wait 3+ years in the utility queue for power. Its workaround is PG&E's Flex Connect. Sites run on spare grid capacity and get throttled when the grid is tight. Tesla expects a typical project to open 2+ years sooner.