Uber and Waymo will square off in Washington on Monday as the D.C. Council hears a bill that would allow fully driverless robotaxi commercial operations for the first time in the district. Public records and interviews reviewed by TechCrunch on July 13 show Uber has quietly moved from partner to policy antagonist, arguing the proposed rule would displace human drivers and hand Alphabet-owned Waymo a de facto monopoly.
What The D.C. Bill Would Do
Introduced in May by Councilmember Charles Allen, the bill updates the district's 2012 Autonomous Vehicle Act to let the District Department of Transportation issue driverless testing and deployment permits to AV developers holding at least $5 million in liability coverage and reporting crash data within 8 or 72 hours. It also imposes a $0.15-per-mile robotaxi tax, splitting revenue between public transit and workforce transition programs for drivers displaced by automation. Cap-and-tax elements have drawn pushback from robotaxi backers.
Uber's Hybrid-Network Play
Uber first laid out the hybrid concept in a May white paper: any single ride-hail platform must include both human drivers and autonomous vehicles, matched to riders based on trip conditions. Waymo says it does not support such network-composition mandates, calling for language clarifying that different network models can coexist. Uber policy chief Javi Correoso argued in a D.C. Council roundtable that autonomous-only fleets add congestion, cannot help disabled riders and "one AV displaces roughly four drivers." Innovation Majority director Greg Rogers called Uber's push "regulatory capture."
From Trade-Secret Suit To Frenemy Endgame
Waymo sued Uber in 2017 over trade-secret theft tied to Anthony Levandowski before the two settled and later teamed up to put Waymo robotaxis on the Uber app in Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta. That relationship has soured this year, with Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli posting X videos calling Waymo behavior "scary" and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi backing regulators on AV safety inquiries. Related coverage: Momenta's $752M Hong Kong IPO and Uber's $500M Nuro-Lucid Deal.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch, Bloomberg Opinion and Wired.