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Waymo kicks off initial tests in Japan with launch event
Waymo launches early tests in Japan, as Tesla and others look to roll out their own commercial robotaxi services.
Commercial robotaxi company Waymo held a launch event in Japan last week, as the company prepares to enter early manual testing on its first international roads.
After Waymo shared plans to start testing vehicles in Japan in December, the Google-owned firm detailed the launch event in a press release on Monday. The event featured officials from project partners GO, a taxi platform, and Nihon Kotsu, the largest taxi company in Tokyo, along with featuring one of the company’s camera-, lidar-, and radar-outfitted Jaguar I-Pace units, expected to begin manual testing around Tokyo in the weeks to come.
Ichiro Kawanabe, Board Director at Nihon Kotsu and Chairman at both GO and the Japan Taxi Association, said that Waymo’s U.S. operations “demonstrated significant safety benefits,” along with thanking the company for hosting the event at the newly developed Takanawa Gateway City complex.
“I took my first ride with Waymo in Phoenix a year and a half ago and was amazed that there was really no one in the driver’s seat,” the chairman said. “That was the moment I was convinced that autonomous driving technology could absolutely benefit Japan. It will help ensure mobility service in the future of Japan, with the growing aging population and labor shortage.”
Credit: Waymo
Credit: Waymo
This spring, Nihon Kotsu taxi operators will start driving Waymo vehicles across several Tokyo wards this spring, including Chiyoda, Chūō, Kōtō, Minato, Shibuya, Shinagawa, and Shinjuku. The tests will utilize 3D maps of the city, along with utilizing experienced drivers to generate data about traffic laws, patterns, and other road systems ahead of fully autonomous operation.
“After months of strong collaboration with Nihon Kotsu and GO, Waymo has reached a historic milestone— our first venture on international public roads,” said Nicole Gavel, Waymo Senior Director and Head of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships.
“Our partnership demonstrates how Waymo’s 15 years of operational expertise can adapt to new environments through strategic initiatives with industry leaders,” Gavel adds. “In Tokyo, we are abiding by the same steadfast principles that guide us in the U.S. — commitment to safety, dedication to earning trust in communities where we operate, and collaboration with local officials and community groups here in Tokyo.”
The news comes as Tesla, Amazon-owned firm Zoox, and still others are racing to enter the commercial robotaxi business throughout this year. It also comes amidst widespread speculation and debate about the emerging market, and as Tesla and Waymo both aim to begin operations internationally.
READ MORE ON WAYMO: Waymo study analyzes collisions with vulnerable road users
Tesla’s FSD in China, Mexico, commercial robotaxis still incoming
Waymo is already operating paid autonomous ride-hailing services around the U.S., and it said in December that it was giving more than 200,000 autonomous rides per week.
The company currently offers Waymo services in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, Phoenix, Arizona, and, through a partnership with Uber, in Austin, Texas, where Tesla has a Gigafactory and plans to launch initial robotaxi services. The Alphabet-owned company is also aiming to launch services in Atlanta, Georgia and Miami, Florida this year, alongside its early tests in Tokyo.
Although Tesla doesn’t currently operate driverless ride-hailing in any capacity, individual owners in North America can purchase or subscribe to its Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, on which the company’s forthcoming robotaxi platform will be based. In October, the company unveiled the two-seat Cybercab vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals and will be used for the upcoming commercial robotaxi system.
Additionally, the company is aiming to launch its first unsupervised rides commercially in Austin in June, and it recently debuted Supervised FSD in China and Mexico, marking the company’s first international markets.
🎥: Our FULL first ride in the @Tesla Cybercab pic.twitter.com/6gR7OgKRCz
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
Waymo vs. Tesla vs. the competition
While Tesla hasn’t quite gotten a commercial robotaxi service to market yet, Waymo, Amazon-owned company Zoox, and still many others have begun their own paid ride-hailing services or early tests. Meanwhile, Tesla’s approach to the technology is vastly different than that of Waymo and others, utilizing a camera-only, AI-trained neural network system, rather than 3D geomapping.
For one, the company can generate a larger pool of training data from real-time driving behavior of its individual owners, for instance as compared to Waymo’s use of a more-limited fleet of taxi drivers. Many argue that this, along with the cost-effectiveness of producing a system that’s built into every vehicle and utilizes only cameras, make the system more scalable than those of Waymo and others.
Still, some support the use of more than just camera systems and building in sensor redundancy as a way to maximize safety, especially as the technologies are still fairly new. Former Waymo CEO John Krafcik, who was a part of the company until 2021, criticized the FSD system in December for not including enough safety measures to support a realistic commercial robotaxi business, and he went on to call Tesla “a car company with a driver-assist system.”
“If a company were serious about building a safe and accessible robotaxi business, it would look nothing like what was shown,” Krafcik said during an interview. “The cost of a robust sensor set, including lidar, is trivial on a per-mile basis. Even more so for mapping. And the safety benefits measured in human harm reduction are real and verifiable.”
Waymo valued at over $45 billion following latest financing round: report
Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.
Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.
Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.
A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.
Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.
Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.
Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.
The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.
The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.
Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.
Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.
The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.
2026.38 just dropped.
Model 3 gets Dynamic Headlight Leveling — low beams auto-aim around traffic for max visibility, less glare. Model 3 / Y (AMD HW3) also pick up sharper Tesla visuals + an enhanced park scene on the center display.
Legacy Intel cars get Supercharger Site… pic.twitter.com/45ac4AH6Vs
— Frunk To Trunk (@FrunkToTrunk) September 30, 2026
Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.
When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.
Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.
The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.
Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.
For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update
