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You might recall the congressional hearing last month that sparked criticism against Waymo over its use of remote assistance workers in the Philippines. We have covered that issue extensively. You can read about the company’s remote assistance and road assistance teams here and here. 

Waymo tends to get the most attention because, well, those robotaxis are now operating commercially in 10 U.S. cities, with more coming soon. But the issue of remote assistance is not a Waymo issue. It’s an autonomous vehicle technology issue. 

A new report from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) makes my point. 

Markey sent letters to seven U.S. companies — Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles relied on input from remote staff. 

They all refused to say, according to the results of Markey’s investigation. Markey said it was a “stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of remote assistance operators to help guide their AVs.”

You can read senior reporter Sean O’Kane’s article, which digs into the issue and includes the rather mute responses from the companies. (TechCrunch reached out to all of them.) One interesting admission from Tesla: The company said its remote assistance workers are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control (a very different thing than “remote assistance”) as a final escalation maneuver.

But here’s the thing — this is not going away. And silence will not defuse the matter. If anything, Markey seems more motivated than ever to get answers. He is now calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate companies’ use of remote assistance workers and said he is “working on legislation to impose strict guardrails on AV companies’ use of remote operators.”

A little bird

Nothing this week that we have been able to verify. Send us tips! Have one? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.

Deals!

It seems like just last week I was writing about Uber being everywhere, all at once. And I see it is still a trend, although this time it isn’t directly related to autonomous vehicles. 

Uber said it is buying Berlin-based startup Blacklane, which provides on-demand, black-car chauffeur services, as the ride-hail giant expands deeper into luxury and executive travel services. Blacklane, which was founded in 2011, had raised more than $100 million to date from rental car company Sixt, Mercedes-Benz, and Alfahim, a conglomerate in the UAE.

The timing of the acquisition is notable. It comes just a few weeks after Uber announced the launch of Uber Elite, a chauffeur service that also offers a bunch of luxury offerings like airport meet-and-greets and in-vehicle amenities. 

Other deals that got my attention …

Manna Air Delivery, a consumer drone delivery startup based in Ireland, raised $50 million from ARK Invest, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Schooner Capital, Coca-Cola HBC, and Molten Ventures.

Saronic Technologies, an autonomous military ship developer based in Austin, raised $1.75 billion in a Series D funding round led by Kleiner Perkins. The company is now valued at $9.25 billion. Other investors include Advent International, Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, BAM Elevate, and other new partners and recognizes the continued commitment of its existing investors, including 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Elad Gil, and Franklin Templeton.

Voltify, a startup that has developed a way to retrofit diesel locomotives with battery power, raised $30 million in seed funding co-led by Israeli venture firm Aleph and Australian miner Fortescue.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Also, the micromobility company created inside Rivian that spun out last year, will work with DoorDash to develop autonomous delivery vehicles. As part of the deal, DoorDash took part in Also’s $200 million Series C funding round, which was led by Greenoaks Capital. DoorDash is getting a seat on Also’s board of directors, too.

Baidu robotaxis stalled throughout Wuhan, China, in some cases trapping passengers for up to two hours due to system failure. 

GM is ramping up its efforts to improve its advanced driver-assistance system, Super Cruise. CEO Mary Barra posted on LinkedIn that GM has started supervised testing of its next-gen automated driving system on public highways in California and Michigan.

“Soon, more than 200 supervised and manual test vehicles will be in live traffic, with trained drivers ready to take over at any time. This data will guide future updates to strengthen our autonomous capabilities,” she wrote.

Lucid issued a recall for more than 4,000 Gravity SUVs after discovering a problem with the seat belts.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that traffic deaths fell 6.7% to 36,640 in 2025 from the prior year. This is the second-lowest traffic fatality rate in recorded history at 1,10 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to the NHTSA.

All of those long TSA lines are prompting airlines to catch up and adapt. For instance, United Airlines has updated its mobile app to show TSA wait times at select airports.

The Subaru-Toyota partnership keeps cranking out EVs. At the New York Auto Show, Subaru introduced the all-electric Gateway, a three-row SUV that is essentially a rebadged Toyota Highlander EV. 

Tesla’s Q1 sales figures show its cheaper vehicles aren’t helping it turn around declining sales. (Some legacy automakers have seen EV sales plummet.) That seems to have affected Tesla’s workforce numbers at its Austin, Texas, factory, which dropped 22% in 2025. Meanwhile, I riff on the changing of the guard over at Tesla (and, no, I am not referring to the string of executive departures there, although that is interesting). CEO Elon Musk shared that production of the Tesla Model S and X has ended, a milestone that marks the shift away from building cars designed for people to drive and toward robots and self-driving cars.  

Toyota’s Woven Capital has appointed a new CIO and COO in a push to find the “future of mobility.”

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle company WeRide launched robotaxi operations without a human safety operator in Dubai as part of a broader expansion in the Middle East.

Waymo’s robotaxi service is now live at San Antonio International, its fourth major airport. Meanwhile, Wired looked at Waymo’s school bus problem (meaning the investigation into the illegal behavior of its robotaxis around school buses). The article provides new details on how the Austin School District tried to help Waymo solve the problem. It didn’t work.

One more thing …

My podcast, the Autonocast, spent some time talking with Ashu Rege, DoorDash’s VP of Autonomy. We recorded the episode prior to the Also-DoorDash announcement, which makes his comments about the company’s strategy all the more interesting. Check out the episode here.

AI skeptics aren’t the only ones warning users not to unthinkingly trust models’ outputs — that’s what the AI companies say themselves in their terms of service.

Take Microsoft, which is currently focused on getting corporate customers to pay for Copilot. But it’s also been getting dinged on social media over Copilot’s terms of use, which appear to have been last updated on October 24, 2025.

“Copilot is for entertainment purposes only,” the company warned. “It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.”

A Microsoft spokesperson told PCMag that the company will be updating what they described as “legacy language.”

“As the product has evolved, that language is no longer reflective of how Copilot is used today and will be altered with our next update,” the spokesperson said.

Tom’s Hardware noted that Microsoft isn’t the only company using this kind of disclaimer for AI.  For example, both OpenAI and xAI caution users that they should not rely on their output as “the truth” (to quote xAI) or as “a sole service of truth or factual information” (OpenAI).

A Democratic congressman had harsh criticism for Polymarket for allowing users to bet on the date the United States would confirm the rescue of Air Force service members shot down over Iran.

In a social media post on Friday, Representative Seth Moulton wrote, “They could be your neighbor, a friend, a family member. And people are betting on whether or not they’ll be saved. This is DISGUSTING.” (President Donald Trump announced early Sunday that the second service member, a weapons system officer, has been rescued.)

Moulton also described Polymarket as a “dystopian death market” and noted that Donald Trump Jr. is an investor. The congressman recently banned his staff from participating in prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. 

Polymarket responded that it had taken the market down “immediately” for not meeting the company’s integrity standards.

“It should not have been posted, and we are investigating how this slipped through our internal safeguards,” the company said.

Polymarket previously saw hundreds of millions of dollars traded on contracts tied to the bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel.