The launch caps roughly a year of testing on Denver's streets, including cold-weather validation for the city's winter conditions. Waymo's initial service area covers about 60 square miles, stretching from Cory-Merrill to North Washington and Villa Park to City Park — taking in downtown, RiNo, Capitol Hill, Cherry Creek, and venues like Coors Field, Ball Arena, and Empower Field at Mile High.

Access is rolling out gradually rather than to everyone at once. Tens of thousands of Denver residents had already joined the waitlist ahead of launch day, and Waymo says riders will be invited in phases as the fleet scales up. Denver International Airport is not part of the initial coverage area, though Waymo has said airport service is planned for a future expansion.

The vehicles serving Denver are built on Waymo's sixth-generation platform, nicknamed Ojai, which the company says brings larger cabin screens and more rear legroom than earlier generations.

• Launch date: Tuesday, September 1, 2026
• Initial coverage: ~60 square miles of central Denver
• Simultaneous launches: San Diego and Tampa
• Access: rolling invitations from an existing waitlist
• Airport service: not yet included, planned for later expansion

The rollout hasn't been without friction. Colorado taxi and rideshare drivers have challenged part of Waymo's state permitting, and a recent multi-vehicle crash pushed another car into a stopped Waymo. Public sentiment is also mixed — a Colorado Polling Institute survey last month found 58% of non-riders said they were unlikely to try a self-driving taxi, versus 32% who said they were likely to.

Denver becomes Waymo's latest — and coldest-climate — commercial market, testing whether the company's driverless tech can hold up through a full Rocky Mountain winter while it keeps expanding its US footprint city by city.

What the Q-Truck Is

Developed by Westwell under its Qomolo autonomous-driving brand, the Q-Truck is a purpose-built, full-time autonomous new-energy commercial vehicle for container logistics. Rather than automating a normal tractor unit, Westwell removed the driver's cab entirely — the front end houses only the computing, sensing, cooling, and battery systems. Westwell calls it the world's first mass-produced unmanned commercial vehicle, and it has been in commercial operation since 2020.

That cabless layout isn't just styling. Dropping the cab frees up cargo space and lets the vehicle be optimized purely around the sensor suite, battery pack, and swap mechanism, since no human ever needs to see out of it or climb inside.

Specifications

Specs reflect the current-generation Q-Truck as marketed by Westwell and reported in fleet deployments; battery swap time and load figures vary slightly by source and deployment site.

How the Q-Truck Has Evolved

Westwell has iterated the Q-Truck through several hardware generations since its 2020 debut, steadily pushing range and payload as battery and control systems matured.

Range has followed a similar pattern: early units were rated around 200 km, while the fourth-generation trucks in current fleet service settle at 150 km per charge — likely a trade-off tuned for real-world duty cycles and battery-swap-first operation rather than a straight regression.

Autonomy and Safety Systems

The Q-Truck's autonomous stack runs on Westwell's WellDrive platform, combining sensor fusion, positioning, planning, and control for around-the-clock operation with high-precision control in tight, complex yards.

• Multi-sensor fusion: LiDAR, a Westwell proprietary long-range binocular camera, and multiple monocular cameras for 360° monitoring
• Perception continues to track surroundings even when the tractor and trailer are decoupled
• Precision docking in enclosed logistics roads under 3 m wide
• Redundant braking and dual power supplies with SOH monitoring on low-voltage batteries
• EHPS dual-source steering pumps to eliminate single-point steering failure
• EBS and EPB systems providing complementary braking redundancy
• Power-off redundant protection for a safe stop during power loss
• Four emergency stop buttons positioned around the vehicle exterior
• Impact-sensing collision beams that respond and stop on contact within milliseconds

Pros

• Proven at commercial scale — in service since 2020 across five countries
• Cabless design maximizes cargo space and removes cab-related cost and complexity entirely
• Fast battery swapping keeps utilization high without long charging downtime
• Layered safety redundancy (steering, braking, power, emergency stop) built for driverless operation
• CE certified and already integrated into large operators' daily terminal workflows

Cons

• 150 km range and enclosed-yard design limit it to port, park, and industrial settings — not a public-road truck
• Requires dedicated battery-swap infrastructure to hit its fastest turnaround times
• Westwell doesn't publish full technical specs sheets publicly; figures come largely from case studies and press coverage

The Q-Truck isn't chasing the general trucking market — it's built to own a specific job: moving heavy containers around enclosed yards, continuously, without a driver. On that narrow but demanding brief, it's one of the few autonomous heavy vehicles with years of real commercial mileage behind it rather than just demo footage. 

    The country has 53 centers where people wearing touch-sensitive gloves perform routine tasks, and robots mimic their movements. Another 34 such centers are under construction or planned.

   Large companies are also collecting data. For example, the JD marketplace wants to involve up to 600,000 people in the project and collect 10 million hours of movement within two years. 

This data is needed to teach robots how to interact with the physical world, for example, pouring coffee, stocking goods, or performing manufacturing tasks.

The government actively supports these industries. About 80% of medical centers receive state support.

According to The Economist, by early 2026, up to 70% of humanoids produced in China were used specifically for training.

A mass commercial market for such robots will likely emerge well after the transition ends.

In this video from the Prop Department channel, the creator repairs and tests his custom Tesla-powered mini jet boat at about 50% power after previously blowing up the motor/inverter. He installs a new inverter, uses temporary car batteries for 12V systems, and takes the boat for a night run through downtown Nashville. The video covers the root cause of the earlier failure (spinning the motor while powered off, generating damaging voltage), ongoing issues like cavitation, and plans for future full-power testing and tuning. Fun, hands-on EV project content with solid progress shown.

How Many Robotaxis Will Tesla Really Run in Las Vegas in 2026?

Tesla will likely field somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000 robotaxis on the Las Vegas Strip by mid-2027, according to the company's own Cybercab chief engineer, even though Nevada regulators just cleared the automaker for the full 5,000-vehicle ceiling it originally requested. That gap between what Tesla asked for and what Tesla actually expects to deliver is the real story behind Nevada's biggest autonomous-vehicle decision to date.

• The Nevada Transportation Authority approved permits letting Tesla, Uber, and Waymo collectively deploy up to 8,000 robotaxis across Clark County within twelve months.
• Tesla's own Cybercab chief engineer, Eric Early, told regulators the company would be "extremely happy" reaching roughly 2,500 vehicles in year one.
• The approval follows an interim July permit that capped Tesla at just ten vehicles, restricted to a 45 mph corridor on the Strip with no airport pickups.
• Nevada becomes the third state, after Texas and Florida, to greenlight Tesla's Unsupervised Full Self-Driving robotaxi platform.

What Exactly Did the Nevada Transportation Authority Approve?

On Thursday, August 20, 2026, the Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously issued three separate Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permits. Tesla walked away authorized for up to 5,000 vehicles. Waymo and Uber each received clearance for 1,000 robotaxis, with Uber running its fleet through partnerships with Hyundai's Motional unit and Amazon-owned Zoox. Combined, that's an 8,000-vehicle ceiling for a single metro area, a scale nobody in the robotaxi business has attempted in North America before.

The permits cover all of Clark County, home to roughly 2.3 million residents and the Las Vegas Strip itself. Regulators structured the approval so operators must notify the commission before expanding service beyond the county, giving the state a built-in checkpoint as deployment scales. It's a notably different posture than the interim permit issued a month earlier, which had capped Tesla at ten vehicles running under strict human-supervision requirements.

Why Did Nevada Initially Cap Tesla at Just Ten Vehicles?

Tesla Robotaxi LLC filed its original application back in June, requesting authority for 5,000 vehicles across Clark County, plus pickup rights at Harry Reid International Airport and Henderson Executive Airport. The Authority's July 27 response stunned the company: a "maximum fleet of ten fully autonomous vehicles," confined to an authority-approved corridor along the Strip with a hard 45 mph speed ceiling.

The interim permit also barred passenger pickups within a quarter-mile of the airport, required every vehicle to display "Robotaxi" branding, and mandated that riders receive notice before each driverless trip. Perhaps most notably, it demanded "appropriate human supervision" under Society of Automotive Engineers standards, a meaningfully stricter posture than what Tesla runs in Austin, where the company has operated without an in-vehicle safety monitor since January 2026.

• Ten-vehicle fleet cap during the interim period
• 45 mph maximum speed on the approved corridor
• No pickups within a quarter-mile of Harry Reid International Airport
• Mandatory human supervision under SAE guidelines

Why Does Tesla Expect Only 2,500 Vehicles, Not 5,000?

Permits and fleets are two different things. Eric Early, Tesla's Cybercab chief engineer, addressed that gap directly during the August hearing. "The 5,000 has always been a ceiling for us," he told commissioners. "I don't think we'll be in a position by this time next year to deploy 5,000 vehicles, and it's not because of the technology. I think we would be extremely happy and satisfied if we could get ourselves up to 2,500, maybe a bit higher than that in the next year."

Tesla representatives reiterated a phased rollout, describing an initial small-scale launch that expands gradually rather than a mass simultaneous deployment. That framing matters for anyone tracking whether the 8,000-vehicle regional ceiling translates into an actual traffic and labor shift on the ground. Even a 2,500-vehicle Tesla fleet, layered against Waymo's 1,000 and Uber's 1,000, would still represent one of the densest robotaxi concentrations anywhere in the country.

What Does This Mean for the Las Vegas Economy?

The Strip isn't just tourist scenery, it's an economic engine that regulators can't afford to disrupt carelessly. Casinos along the corridor generated roughly $8.8 billion in gaming revenue during 2025, about $24 million a day, and accounted for around 56 percent of the state's $15.8 billion in total gaming revenue that year. Las Vegas drew 38.5 million visitors in 2025, supporting more than 250,000 area jobs.

Against that backdrop, opposition from local taxi operators was predictable. Kimberly Maxson-Rushton, an attorney representing the Livery Operators Association, raised two central concerns during the hearing: potential oversaturation of the commercial transportation market and worsened roadway congestion, particularly in the Golden Triangle, an area that has already absorbed heavy autonomous-vehicle testing traffic. Uber, notably, pushed for a hybrid model blending human drivers with robotaxis rather than flooding the market with driverless capacity all at once.

How Does Nevada's Approach Compare to Texas and Florida?

Nevada is now the third state to authorize Tesla's Unsupervised Full Self-Driving robotaxi platform, joining Texas and Florida. But the regulatory texture differs meaningfully. Austin has allowed Tesla to run without an in-vehicle safety monitor since January 2026, a lighter-touch model regulators there consider proven enough to loosen. Nevada, by contrast, opened with the strictest possible interim conditions before easing into a broader permit, suggesting state officials wanted operational evidence before extending trust.

Zoox offers another useful comparison point. Amazon's robotaxi subsidiary has operated in Nevada since 2025 and had been capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday's decision reshuffled the competitive field. That existing track record likely gave commissioners a baseline for judging autonomous-vehicle safety performance within the state before they extended Tesla and Waymo similarly large allowances.

What Should Las Vegas Residents and Visitors Expect Next?

Rollout timing remains the open question. Tesla told regulators it plans a small initial launch followed by gradual expansion, rather than an immediate flood of thousands of vehicles onto Strip-adjacent streets. Riders should expect Robotaxi-branded vehicles, mandatory in-app or in-vehicle notice that a trip is driverless, and geofenced service areas that expand only as the company reports data back to the Authority.

• Watch for phased vehicle counts reported through Nevada Transportation Authority filings over the next two to three quarters.
• Expect service to concentrate initially along Strip-adjacent corridors before spreading countywide.
• Anticipate continued friction from traditional livery operators as fleet numbers climb toward four figures.
• Track Waymo and Uber's parallel 1,000-vehicle rollouts, since combined competition will shape pricing faster than any single operator's pace.

For now, the headline number worth remembering isn't 5,000, it's 2,500. That's the figure Tesla's own engineering leadership put on the table, and it's the number that will most realistically define what robotaxi service in Las Vegas looks like heading into 2027.

The RX is the first SUV under Huawei's HIMA (Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance) to break from the alliance's numerical naming convention, joining the Luxeed S7 sedan, R7 coupe-SUV, and V9 minivan. It's offered in two presale trims — 299,800 yuan and 359,800 yuan (~$53,465) — with the base variant getting an in-cabin LiDAR and the top trim built around an architecture designed for L3 autonomous driving.

A near-twin for the Xiaomi YU7

The RX measures 5,020 mm long, 2,007 mm wide, and 1,585–1,600 mm tall on a 3,000 mm wheelbase — dimensions that closely mirror the Xiaomi YU7. Power comes from either a 277 kW (371 hp) single-motor rear-drive setup or a dual-motor all-wheel-drive configuration combining 160 kW and 277 kW motors, for a combined output of roughly 594 hp on the top variant. CLTC range tops out at 852 km.

Four LiDAR sensors and a redundant driving stack

Built on Huawei's Tuling platform and Chery's "343" architecture, the RX runs Huawei's next-generation Giant Whale battery platform and a rare 4-LiDAR array — most premium Chinese EVs use between one and three. Luxeed also fits a fully redundant architecture for power, communications, and perception, aimed at supporting more advanced assisted-driving features than its siblings.

Chassis tuned for track-day claims

The RX rides on dual-chamber air suspension with six-piston front brake calipers, an all-aluminum double-wishbone front end, and a five-link independent rear. Luxeed says chassis tuning involved former Aston Martin CEO Tobias Moers, and that the RX completed an evasive lane-change maneuver at over 250 km/h on a banked oval proving ground, with Huawei citing a sub-1ms decision-chain latency for its centralized driving-control system.

Luxeed handed over 9,906 vehicles in China during July 2026, and the RX is expected to officially launch this fall following the presale period — with pricing already positioning it above the Xiaomi YU7's entry trim and squarely against the recently launched Voyah Passion S.

Unveiled at the 2026 Chengdu Auto Show, the Ray 7 is a five-seat, all-electric sedan measuring 4,960 mm long, 1,900 mm wide, and 1,455 mm tall, on a 2,920 mm wheelbase. The proportions give it a low, wide-body stance with a fastback profile, semi-hidden door handles, a blacked-out C-pillar, and a full-width front light bar built around the new illuminated logo.

Huawei motor, CATL batteries, 700 km range

Power comes from a Huawei-supplied permanent-magnet synchronous motor producing 180 kW (241 hp), paired with LFP battery cells from CATL and GAC Aion's own Yinpai Battery subsidiary. GAC Aion rates the Ray 7 at up to 700 km of range and wraps the pack in its in-house "Magazine" battery safety technology.

A "Super Chassis" and LiDAR-based ADAS

GAC Aion says the Ray 7 is the world's first production car to use a "Super Chassis" built on a chip-level drive-and-control integration architecture, combined with Huawei's brake-by-wire EMB (Electromechanical Braking) system. Driver assistance is handled by a LiDAR-based system with algorithms GAC Aion says are derived from its Level 4 autonomous driving research, with an optional roof-mounted LiDAR sensor available.

A brand on the rebound

The Ray 7 arrives as GAC Aion works to reverse a rough 2025, when full-year sales fell 22.6% to 290,081 units. So far in 2026 the brand has rebounded sharply, selling 28,807 vehicles in July (up 36.4% year-on-year) and 210,386 units over the first seven months — a 62.1% increase over the same period in 2025.

GAC Aion has not yet announced pricing or a launch date, but the Ray 7 is expected to land in the 200,000–250,000 yuan range (roughly $28,000–$35,000), putting it in direct competition with the Xiaomi SU7, Zeekr 007, and Shangjie Z7.

Unitree Robot Overtakes Usain Bolt, and It's About to Get Even Faster

   The Chinese company Unitree Robotics unveiled a new humanoid robot, Superman, capable of reaching speeds of up to 12.66 meters per second. This exceeds the top speed recorded by Usain Bolt during his world-record 100-meter dash in 2009, when he ran at 12.4 meters per second.

   During testing, the robot also performed a 2-meter standing jump.

   According to Unitree, a speed of 12.66 meters per second makes Superman the company's fastest humanoid robot. By comparison, the previous H1 model reached speeds of up to 10 meters per second.

   In 2025, China held its first marathon in which robots were allowed to participate alongside humans. Back then, it was a pitiful sight: most of the robots were controlled by humans, each with a support team of a dozen people, but still, far from all of them made it to the finish line.

   Only a year passed. In the spring of 2026, robots took part in the marathon again. Over the course of a year, Chinese companies developed numerous new models—not for commercial sale, but to perfect the technology.

   A truly qualitative leap occurred. If in 2025, a robot's best result was worse than a human's worst, then by 2026, a robot's best result was an absolute world record. The number of robots that ran completely autonomously and managed to finish also increased by orders of magnitude.

Now folded into the broader Demo Days Festival tour, Electrify Expo San Francisco spans over 1 million square feet of outdoor festival space with no appointments and no sales pitch — just open access to ride, drive, and demo. General admission starts at $24.99, and kids 5 and under get in free.

Test drive EVs from the big names

Attendees can get behind the wheel of electric cars and trucks from brands including Tesla, Ford, Rivian, Lucid, Toyota, Volvo, Lexus, Chevrolet, and GMC, alongside hybrids and PHEVs. A dedicated off-road Terrain Park — new for 2026 — puts trucks, SUVs, and crossovers through a 3-4 minute guided course with hill climbs, articulation mounds, and switchbacks, included with every ticket.

E-bikes, scooters, boards, and more

Beyond four wheels, the festival's demo courses cover e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters, e-skateboards, and e-watercraft, with brands like LeMond, Riese & Müller, and VORO Motors on hand to let attendees try before they buy.

New for 2026: robots and flying cars

This year's expansion adds a brand-new Robotics Showcase featuring humanoid, home-service, cleaning, delivery, and companion robots, plus an Aerial Mobility Showcase for eVTOL and flying-car concepts. Freestyle motocross demos, a kids zone, live music, and food round out the weekend.

Charging and solar tech on display

Outside the demo courses, exhibitors including ChargePoint, Anker, Sunrun, and Pacific Gas and Electric will showcase home charging hardware and solar solutions for attendees looking beyond the vehicle itself.

Electrify Expo San Francisco runs Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM to 5 PM, at Alameda Point. Tickets and the full exhibitor list are available on the event's official site.

The AT-150 was jointly developed by SPIC, mining truck manufacturer Inner Mongolia North Hauler (NHL), and OEM-agnostic autonomous haulage specialist EACON. It combines three technologies that rarely appear together on the same vehicle: pure electric drive, bidirectional driving, and full autonomy — with EACON describing it as a genuine "mining transport robot" rather than a converted truck.

No cab, no front, no back

Removing the driver's cab entirely let engineers eliminate the traditional distinction between the front and rear of the vehicle. Paired with all-wheel steering and China's first two-way autonomous driving decision system, the AT-150 can drive in either direction through narrow work surfaces without needing to execute a U-turn — a routine bottleneck for conventional haul trucks working tight benches in an open pit.

Semi-solid-state batteries built for -30°C to 50°C

To handle the extreme swings of a northern Chinese mining climate, the AT-150 is the first truck of its tonnage class in China to use semi-solid-state power batteries. The pack supports 3.4 MW, 900V ultra-fast charging and is rated to operate reliably across a range of -30°C to 50°C. A full charge takes no more than six hours, and the truck's modular charging-and-swapping setup is designed to keep equipment deployment above 85%.

65% less energy per tonne than diesel

On-site measurements at SPIC's South pit found the AT-150 consumes 65% less energy per unit of work than a diesel truck of equivalent tonnage — while cutting CO₂ and NOx emissions that come with conventional haulage. The truck runs a closed-loop unmanned cycle covering automatic loading, autonomous driving, precise unloading, obstacle avoidance, and automatic parking, removing drivers from one of mining's harshest working environments while standardizing operation to reduce human error.

EACON frames the AT-150 as a new benchmark for "high-end, intelligent, and green" heavy transport in large open-pit mines — and with China's autonomous mining sector moving fast in 2026, it's likely to be the first of several cabless designs to reach production.