Waymo dominates Texas autonomous vehicle registrations

Waymo has registered 577 autonomous vehicles in Texas under a new state reporting regime that took effect on May 28, according to TechCrunch. The figures come from a Texas Department of Motor Vehicles website that now tracks automated-vehicle fleets and requires companies testing or deploying in the state to disclose fleet size and safety information. The same tracker shows far smaller registrations for Tesla, which listed 42 vehicles.

The numbers are not a direct proxy for how many robotaxis are actually carrying passengers on a given day. TechCrunch notes that some companies with registrations, including Nuro and Zoox, are not operating commercially, and the DMV data does not indicate active utilization. Still, the registration counts reveal something more basic: who is building enough operational capacity to justify paperwork, insurance, and a visible footprint, and who is keeping deployments small enough to stay flexible.

Waymo’s lead is not just over Tesla. The tracker lists 317 vehicles for Avride and 47 for Nuro, plus smaller fleets such as Volkswagen subsidiary MOIA with 12 electric autonomous microbuses. Texas is also using the same site to publish self-driving truck registrations, where Aurora is listed with 91 vehicles, followed by Gatik AI with 64, Kodiak AI with 33, Waabi with 13, and others. By putting cars and trucks on the same public ledger, the state is effectively turning “autonomy” from a marketing claim into a countable operational category.

That shift matters because the self-driving business has long been shaped by what companies choose to measure and disclose. A large registered fleet suggests a company expects to operate at scale in multiple cities and can tolerate scrutiny when weather, roadworks, or edge cases force pauses. Waymo, for example, previously paused operations in some Texas cities in June 2025 after vehicles struggled around floods, TechCrunch reports. A smaller footprint can mean a company is earlier in the technology cycle—or that it is optimizing for optionality, expanding only where the cost of failure is low.

The Texas law also changes incentives for competitors by standardizing a baseline of disclosure. If the state’s tool becomes a reference point for city officials, insurers, and partners, companies that want permits, pickup zones, or commercial agreements may find themselves negotiating from a position defined by a public fleet number.

On the day the new tracker went live, Texas could show Waymo’s 577 registrations in one line—and Tesla’s 42 in the next.