Robotaxis in 2026: Lessons for Campus, Resort and Sharing Fleets

Robotaxis are no longer a test in one city. In 2026 Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai all grew their services, and regulators answered with permits, exemptions and formal questions. For anyone running a campus, resort or closed-site fleet, or a scooter or golf cart sharing service, the lesson is not about the cars. It is about how permission is won: share safety data, sort out insurance first, start small, and keep a record of everything.

One honest note before we start. Between July and September 2026 there was no major news on self-driving shuttles for campuses or resorts, or on low-speed self-driving golf carts. The big moves were robotaxis on public roads. The lessons below come from them.

How fast are robotaxis growing in 2026?

Fast, and on three continents. The main moves between July and September 2026 were these:

• Waymo. On 1 September it launched public service in Denver, San Diego and Tampa, and now runs commercial service in 14 US cities with more than 4,000 vehicles. It launched fully in Dallas on 4 August and citywide in Houston on 20 August, and it holds a Nevada permit for up to 1,000 vehicles in Clark County (TechCrunch, Waymo). On 17 September it named Singapore as its first international expansion (Waymo).
• Zoox. On 30 July it received the first NHTSA commercial exemption for a purpose-built robotaxi, for up to 2,500 vehicles a year for two years, and paid rides followed in Las Vegas (CNBC). Nevada’s 100-vehicle cap on Zoox expired on 25 September (TechCrunch).
• Tesla. On 3 September it began paid Cybercab rides in Austin, in a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors (Electrek).
• Baidu Apollo Go. By 30 June it was in 28 cities with more than 23 million public rides in total. It is testing on open roads in London with Uber and Lyft, runs a fully driverless commercial service in Dubai that can also be booked in Uber, and is testing driverless cars in Hong Kong (Baidu, 18 August).
• WeRide. In its first-half 2026 results on 14 September it reported about 3,400 L4 self-driving vehicles, more than 1,800 of them robotaxis, and about 400 vehicles in the Middle East covering more than 70% of the core urban areas of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It runs service in Singapore’s Punggol with Grab and in Zurich with Uber, and its revenue rose 73% year on year (WeRide filing).
• Pony.ai and Uber. On 14 August they announced plans for more than 2,000 robotaxis in Europe, starting in Zagreb and adding four more European cities, with the Middle East also planned (TechCrunch).

Notice the pattern. Even the largest companies grow one city, one permit and one vehicle cap at a time.

What do regulators want in return for permission?

Data. Permission to grow is being traded for reporting, and companies that skip steps get questions.

• Zoox’s exemption came with continued reporting of crashes, disengagements and safety incidents (CNBC). A disengagement is a moment when the self-driving system stops driving and a person or a safety process takes over.
• On the same day Tesla started paid Cybercab rides, NHTSA opened Audit Query AQ26002, questioning Tesla’s self-certification to federal safety standards. On 10 September a Special Order required sworn answers by 30 September (NHTSA, Electrek).
• The US Department of Transportation’s 2026 regulatory agenda, published on 7 July, lists about 15 rulemakings related to self-driving vehicles. Eight of them adapt 10 federal safety standards to vehicles without manual controls (Sidley).

Safety numbers have also become part of the public case for growth. On 24 September Waymo reported 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers in the same areas, across 270 million self-driving miles. These are the company’s own figures (Waymo). Whatever you think of them, Waymo can make the claim only because it has kept the records.

A private campus or resort is not a public road, and rules for private sites differ by country, so check locally. But expect the same questions from your site owner, your insurer and sometimes the local authority: what happened, how often, and what did you change?

Why does insurance come before expansion?

Because nobody lets you carry people until someone has agreed to pay when something goes wrong. On 15 September Waymo announced a partnership with Allianz Partners on insurance and safety research ahead of its launches in London and Munich (Waymo).

Sharing fleets face the same rule. Since 16 July 2026, third-party insurance has been mandatory for e-scooters in Italy, and for sharing fleets the operator is responsible for the plate and the insurance (Consap). Plan for it as a cost per vehicle.

Our advice: before the first self-driving ride on your site, agree these points in writing:

• who insures the vehicle, the riders and other people on site
• what records the insurer wants after an incident, and how fast
• who may stop the service, and when it may restart

Where should a campus or resort start with self-driving vehicles?

On a closed, low-speed site with fixed stops and a known group of riders. Robotaxi companies are earning open city streets one permit at a time. A closed site removes most of the hard cases: one owner sets the rules, speeds are low and the destinations are known. Self-driving shuttles are part of the wider industry too. WeRide, for example, also runs robobuses and shuttles (WeRide filing).

A sensible first setup looks like this:

• a geofence around the area the vehicles may use, and nothing outside it
• named stops instead of door-to-door trips
• low speeds and short routes
• riders the site already knows, such as guests, students or staff
• set service hours, with a person ready to step in
• one route first, and a second only when the first runs cleanly

Our guide to autonomous shuttle software for campuses and resorts explains how stop-to-stop service works in more detail.

What should you log from day one?

Every ride, every stop, every override and every incident, with the time and the place. If you start logging after the first incident, you have nothing to compare it with. Regulators asked Zoox for exactly this kind of record: crashes, disengagements and safety incidents. Your insurer and site owner will want the same.

• Rides: pickup and drop-off stop, start and end time, and the result: completed, cancelled or refused, and why.
• Stops: when the vehicle arrived, how long it waited and whether the rider boarded.
• Overrides: every time a person or a safety process took over, where it happened and the reason.
• Incidents and near misses: what happened, who was involved, photos and notes.
• Changes: every route, stop or software change, with its date.

Keep personal data apart from vehicle data where you can, so you can share safety records without exposing riders, and decide up front how long you keep each kind.

What does this mean for scooter and golf cart sharing?

The same discipline wins permits. Cities are narrowing the field and tightening the rules, and parking and safety are what they watch.

• London. On 25 September the city launched the third phase of its rental e-scooter trial with Lime and Voi, for an initial two years. Dott was not kept. Phase 2 had more than 6 million trips and 96% parking compliance, parking bays are growing from 600 to 2,000, and speed is capped at 12.5 mph (Micromobility.biz).
• Brussels. On 11 June Brussels decided to ban shared e-scooters from 1 January 2027. After licences were annulled on 29 July, a transition lets Dott and Bolt run until 31 December 2026. Free-floating shared bikes stay until May 2028, with at most 2,500 per operator (Brussels Times). A whole category lost its place, while another kept it.
• Belgium. Since 1 September, helmets are mandatory on e-scooters that can go faster than 20 km/h, with a €64 fine. Shared scooters capped at 20 km/h are exempt (Brussels Times).
• Italy. The insurance rule above applies to every sharing fleet in the country.

Treat a permit renewal as a test you sit every day of the previous term. Keep parking and safety records the city can check, share data in the formats cities already use, such as GBFS and MDS, and set your fleet up to meet local speed and helmet rules before you are asked. Golf cart sharing on resorts and campuses follows the same logic on a smaller scale: the site owner is your regulator, and clean records keep the contract.

Where does Axons Mobility fit?

Axons Mobility does not build self-driving technology and sells no hardware. Its self-driving shuttle software is a beta for closed sites only: stop to stop, for private fleets only, with the cart’s own onboard computer doing the driving.

For sharing fleets today, Axons Mobility runs scooter, bike and moped sharing and golf cart rental from one operator console and a branded rider app for iOS and Android in 8 languages. Zones warn riders and record breaches, and GBFS feeds and MDS data are ready for journey planners and city regulators. It works with any connected device that shares location, battery and lock status and takes lock and unlock commands.