Andrew J. Hawkins

Rivian’s smaller, more affordable electric SUV may not arrive until the end of 2026, but the company is getting geared up to start testing development versions of the R2. But before they get released into the wild, they need to disguise themselves in camouflage so prying eyes (and phone cameras) can’t perceive their full awesomeness. To that effect, the company was eager to show off its custom wrap, which looks a bit different from the industry standard black-and-white design. Yes, there’s a Yeti in there.

During an interview with CNBC, Elon Musk laid out some of the details for next month’s robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas, most of which was already known. It will be a small number of vehicles, only 10-20, in the first week, but will increase in size week by week. It will be geofenced to the parts of Austin “that we consider to be the safest,” Musk said. And the vehicles will be monitored by remote operators who can intervene in case of emergency. “We’re going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be,” he added. “It would be foolish not to be so we’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully.” The rest was the standard bluster about “over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the US” and why he thinks Waymo’s use of lidar is fundamentally flawed.

The Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle developer announced that it would soon start mapping and gathering data in Atlanta, where it hopes to eventually launch a robotaxi service. That means that Zoox will be testing in a total of seven cities, including Las Vegas, San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, LA, and Austin. The company said it would start accepting public riders in Las Vegas and SF later this year. The announcement came a day after Uber said it was preparing to launch its next partnership with Waymo in Atlanta.

ATL will be the second city, after Austin, where Waymo’s driverless cars will be available exclusively on the Uber app. Ahead of the public launch this summer, Uber is opening up access to a group of riders selected from the company’s interest list for early test rides. Those riders will get $10 in Uber cash to use on their Waymo ride. And in exchange they’ll be asked to share feedback on the ride, as well as rate the experience after drop-offs. After a few week, Waymo’s driverless vehicles will be available to anyone with an Uber account who’s traveling within the 65-square mile service area that includes Downtown, Buckhead, and Capitol View.

Archer Aviation has said it plans on launching its first commercial air taxi service in 2026, but it doesn’t expect to be “at scale” until 2028, which lines up well with the next Summer Olympics.