# Waymo Raises $5 Billion Debt Financing as Tesla Cybercab Registrations Jump and Robotaxi Operators Expand Globally On October 8, Waymo announced it completed a $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing, while Texas motor vehicle records showed Tesla added 150 Cypecabs in a single day, bringing its total to 319\. Robotaxi operators including Pony\.ai, WeRide, Baidu Apollo Go and Uber are pushing commercial expansion across Europe, the Middle East and Asia\. By China EV Signal Published: 2026-10-13T14:52:07.851Z Updated: 2026-10-13T14:52:07.853Z Canonical article: https://chinaevsignal.com/news/waymo-5-billion-debt-tesla-cybercab-registrations-robotaxi-expansion ## Key takeaways - Waymo announced on October 8 it completed a $5 billion term loan secured by intellectual property, with lenders including Blackstone, PIMCO and Sixth Street\. - Texas motor vehicle records show Tesla registered 150 Cybercabs in a single day, raising the model's total to 319\. - As of October 2026, Waymo operates in 15 U\.S\. cities with a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles and more than 500,000 paid trips per week\. ## Waymo Closes $5 Billion Debt Financing On October 8, Waymo announced the completion of a $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing, secured by intellectual property\. The lenders include Blackstone, PIMCO and Sixth Street\. As of October 2026, Waymo operates in 15 U\.S\. cities with a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles, completing more than 500,000 paid trips per week\. Waymo began its first testing outside the United States in Tokyo in 2026 and has announced plans to enter more than 20 cities including London and New York\. ## Tesla Adds 150 Cybercabs in One Day On the same day, Texas motor vehicle records showed Tesla registered 150 Cypecabs in a single day, bringing the model's total to 319, the largest single-day increase since the vehicle entered the registration system\. Tesla's Cybercab began operations in Texas in early September and is planned to support all-weather operation through FSD iterations\. Cypecab also launched static exhibition tours in Beijing and Shanghai and in Hong Kong, with no commercial operation arrangements in the Chinese market\. In September, when the Cybercab was newly launched, the U\.S\. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a review of about 1,000 Cybercabs to assess how Tesla self-certified that the vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, meets federal safety standards\. ## IIHS Study Reports Lower Crash Rate for Waymo An independent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety covering about 50 million miles of autonomous driving operations found Waymo had 1\.28 reportable crashes per million miles, compared with 4\.06 for human drivers\. In December 2025, during a large-scale power outage in San Francisco, multiple Waymo vehicles stalled at intersections after traffic signals went dark, paralyzing city traffic and blocking emergency vehicles\. The mayor of San Francisco subsequently wrote to regulators requesting a pause on Waymo's expansion until stricter safety conditions were met\. On July 4, 2026, during Independence Day fireworks, dozens of Waymo vehicles caused large-scale congestion near the Golden Gate Bridge\. ## XPeng Launches Robotaxi Brand and Ride-Hailing Mini-Program XPeng Group officially launched the Chinese name "XPeng Yoyo" for its Robotaxi business, and the XPeng Yoyo autonomous ride-hailing mini-program went online simultaneously with an invitation-only beta test\. ## WeRide Expands in the Middle East and Europe WeRide has achieved fully driverless commercial operations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, covering more than 70% of core urban areas with a local fleet of about 400 vehicles\. In Europe, WeRide partnered with Uber to launch in Madrid, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland\. Over the past six months, WeRide averaged 15 orders per vehicle per day, rising to 26 during peak periods, with average passenger wait times reduced to under 10 minutes\. Registered users grew more than 900% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2025\. WeRide's total cost of ownership per Robotaxi vehicle in the Chinese market has fallen by about 38%, and its Middle East subsidiary's Robotaxi business has achieved operating profitability\. Grab entered through a tens-of-millions-of-dollars equity investment in WeRide\. ## Baidu Apollo Go Tests in London and Reports Order Volumes In July 2026, Baidu's Apollo Go partnered with Uber and Lyft's Freenow to start public road testing in London, with plans to offer driverless mobility services to the public starting in 2027\. This is the first on-road test by a Chinese robotaxi in London's complex road conditions\. As of June 2026, Apollo Go had provided more than 23 million cumulative autonomous mobility service orders to the public, with cumulative autonomous driving mileage exceeding 350 million kilometers, of which fully driverless mileage exceeded 240 million kilometers\. In the first quarter of 2026, Apollo Go's fully driverless operating orders reached 3\.2 million; in the second quarter, they were about 1 million\. Baidu attributed part of this order fluctuation to operational adjustments made in some Chinese cities due to regulatory factors\. ## Pony\.ai Expands Uber Partnership to Europe Pony\.ai expanded its global strategic partnership with Uber, planning to deploy more than 2,000 Robotaxis across five European cities based on its existing fleet in Zagreb, Croatia\. Since 2026, Pony\.ai has achieved per-vehicle profitability in Guangzhou and Shenzhen\. ## Uber Integrates Multiple Autonomous Technology Providers Uber has integrated more than six autonomous technology providers, including WeRide, Pony\.ai, Apollo Go, Waymo, Zoox and Wayve\. Its autonomous mobility service grew more than 10 times year-on-year and is currently available in eight cities, with a year-end target to expand to 15 cities covering Hong Kong, Madrid, Zurich, Houston, London, Munich, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area\. ## Bolt and Lucid Plan 25,000 Robotaxi Deployment Bolt partnered with Lucid to launch a plan to deploy 25,000 Robotaxis, an important step toward Bolt's goal of deploying 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035\. ## Waymo's Vertical Integration and Production Partnerships Waymo develops its own driving system, partners with Hyundai Motor to produce the IONIQ 5 Robotaxi at a plant in Savannah, Georgia, and builds its own operations system\. Waymo holds a testing permit in New York, but New York State requires a safety driver inside the vehicle, effectively prohibiting fully driverless commercial service\. ## Company coverage - [Geely news](https://chinaevsignal.com/manufacturers/geely) - [XPeng news](https://chinaevsignal.com/manufacturers/xpeng) - [Changan news](https://chinaevsignal.com/manufacturers/changan) - [Xiaomi news](https://chinaevsignal.com/manufacturers/xiaomi) - [Tesla news](https://chinaevsignal.com/manufacturers/tesla) ## Original publisher 汽车之心. Published: 2026-10-13T06:26:04.000Z