New York scraps robotaxi expansion outside NYC

New York governor Kathy Hochul has pulled a proposal that would have allowed commercial robotaxi services in cities outside New York City, citing insufficient support in the legislature after “conversations with stakeholders,” according to the Guardian. Waymo—Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle unit—still plans to proceed inside New York City under an existing testing permit that requires a trained specialist behind the wheel.

The state isn’t rejecting robotaxis so much as reasserting that “self-driving” is a political status, not an engineering milestone. The technology can be mature enough to run paid driverless rides in Phoenix or parts of Los Angeles, but in New York it remains subject to a permission structure negotiated among regulators, lawmakers, and whatever coalition can credibly claim to speak for “safety.”

Waymo framed the reversal as a missed opportunity, saying it would work the legislature to “advance this issue,” while a pro-tech advocacy group, Chamber of Progress, argued autonomous vehicles are already reducing accidents in states where they operate. But the same story illustrates why robotaxi markets are drifting toward a licensed-guild model: the hardest technical problem increasingly isn’t perception or planning—it’s obtaining the right paperwork in the right jurisdiction.

The upshot is artificial scarcity. If state-level expansion is blocked, the market doesn’t become “safer”; it becomes smaller, slower, and more predictable for incumbents who can afford lobbying, compliance departments, and insurance architectures tailored to each regulator’s preferences. The “stakeholder” process is a moat-building machine.

New York City remains the prize: dense demand, high fares, and a global prestige market. Waymo already has a foothold there, but only under conditions that keep autonomy in a supervised limbo. That arrangement flatters everyone involved. Politicians can claim caution, regulators can claim control, and companies can claim progress—while the public gets a pilot program that’s one legislative mood swing away from being frozen.

Robotaxis are being domesticated into a regulated utility-like service before they’ve had a chance to compete like software. If the future of “autonomy” is a patchwork of permits, mandated safety drivers, and negotiated operational domains, the winners won’t necessarily be the best engineers. They’ll be the firms that can survive the licensing bottleneck—and the political class that gets to sell the bottleneck as consumer protection.