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Agility Robotics vs Tesla Optimus

Two contrasting commercial bets in humanoids — Agility's Digit doing real warehouse work today vs Tesla's Optimus pilot. Deploy's coverage of both.

6 Deploy signals · Agility Robotics ↗ · Tesla (Optimus) ↗

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Just Tesla (Optimus)

Policy18 hours ago

Waymo dominates autonomous vehicle registrations as Tesla trails behind

Source: Transportation & Auto News | TechCrunch

A new Texas DMV registry, launched alongside a state law that took effect May 28 requiring AV operators to disclose fleet and safety data, shows Waymo with 577 registered autonomous vehicles in Texas, followed by Avride at 317, Nuro at 47, and Tesla at 42. On the trucking side, Aurora has 91 self-driving trucks registered, Gatik 64, Kodiak 33, and Waabi 13.

Why it matters

The headline number is Tesla at 42 registered vehicles in Texas, nearly a year after the Austin robotaxi launch and despite announced expansions to Dallas and Houston. That is a fleet-size order of magnitude below Waymo's 577 and even trails Avride. Registration is not utilization (Waymo just paused parts of Texas over flood-handling issues, and Nuro and Zoox aren't running commercially), but the gap is too wide to wave away as a reporting artifact. For anyone modeling robotaxi capex or per-city ramp curves, this is the first state-level dataset that lets you back out vehicles-per-metro instead of trusting press releases.

The more durable story is the disclosure regime itself. Texas just became the first large AV market where fleet counts are a matter of public record, which means competitors, insurers, and city procurement officers can now track quarter-over-quarter growth without an FOIA. Expect California and Arizona to face pressure to match. The trucking numbers are the sleeper read: Aurora at 91 trucks, Gatik at 64, Kodiak at 33 is the clearest public scoreboard yet for driverless freight, and it puts Aurora's commercial lane ahead of the pack by a real margin.

MappingMay 28

Tesla’s own AI trainers don’t trust ‘Full Self-Driving’ or its safety stats, Reuters finds

Source: Electrek

A Reuters investigation based on interviews with nine former Tesla data labelers, a former self-driving engineer, and 11 traffic-safety researchers found that Tesla's "10x safer than human" FSD safety claim relied on comparing Tesla airbag-deployment crashes to federal tow-away crash data, a mismatch a University of Michigan researcher recalculated to roughly 3x when normalized. The report also documents that Tesla extensively pre-mapped its Austin robotaxi zone and the Warner Bros. Cybercab demo route, doubling its Utah labeling staff to about 300 ahead of the June 2025 Austin launch, which still operates around 20 unsupervised vehicles.

Why it matters

The headline finding for operators isn't the safety stat. It's the mapping. Tesla has built its entire AV thesis, and a meaningful portion of its valuation, on the claim that it doesn't need the geofenced HD-map approach Waymo uses. Reuters now has sourced internal accounts of staff driving the Austin zone every night for weeks, labelers annotating curbs and stop lights by hand, and the Utah team doubling to ~300 specifically to prep the launch. That's the Waymo playbook with worse tooling, not a generalized self-driving stack.

The scaling math follows directly. Nearly a year in, Austin is still ~20 unsupervised cars in a hand-annotated zone, some with front-seat monitors. If each new metro requires hundreds of labeler-hours per square mile of operating domain, Tesla's cost-to-expand curve looks a lot more like Waymo's than like a software update push. The 3x vs 10x safety restatement matters for the NHTSA cases and the $243M Florida verdict; the mapping disclosure matters for anyone modeling robotaxi unit economics or competing capex plans.

ChinaMay 28

China’s BYD aims for zero accidents with ‘God’s Eye’, vows crash cost coverage

Source: Tech - South China Morning Post

BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu announced at a Shenzhen press conference that the company's "God's Eye" advanced driver-assistance system will be priced at 12,000 yuan (US$1,770) and that BYD will cover any costs from traffic accidents that occur while the hands-off system is activated. Wang did not give a commercialization timetable; he also said BYD has built more than 6,100 flash-charging stations.

Why it matters

The number that matters is 12,000 yuan, roughly $1,770, for a hands-off ADAS stack that includes more than a dozen cameras, lidar and radar. That is below the bill-of-materials most Western Tier 1s quote just for an automotive lidar unit. BYD is pricing God's Eye like a trim option, not a software upgrade, and using vertical integration (in-house silicon, sensors, batteries) to make the math work. For any operator pricing an L2+ or hands-off stack for the Chinese market, this resets the ceiling.

The liability pledge is the more interesting signal. Tesla, Mercedes (Drive Pilot) and a handful of Chinese OEMs have flirted with assuming costs during activation, but BYD doing it across a mass-market lineup turns ADAS from a feature into an insurance product. Watch whether BYD self-insures the exposure or wraps it with Ping An or PICC; that contract will tell you what BYD's internal disengagement and crash-rate numbers actually look like. The absence of a commercialization date is the hedge: Wang is setting the market's price expectations now and giving the regulators and underwriters time to catch up.

LaunchesMay 27

Figure ramps up humanoid robot manufacturing at unprecedented speed

Source: Robotics & Automation News

Figure AI says its BotQ facility has scaled Figure 03 production from one unit per day to one unit per hour in under 120 days, with more than 350 third-generation robots and over 9,000 actuators across 10+ SKUs built to date. The company reports a 99.3% first-pass yield on its battery line and over 80% first-pass yield on full robots, supported by 150+ networked workstations, 50+ in-process inspection points, and 80+ end-of-line tests.

Why it matters

One unit per hour is roughly 7,000 to 8,000 robots a year at single-shift, which would put Figure ahead of every Western humanoid competitor on installed base if the line holds yield. The number that matters more than throughput is the 80% first-pass yield on full robots and 99.3% on batteries. Most humanoid programs are still rework shops, where every unit gets torn down and re-flashed before it ships. Crossing 80% first-pass is the threshold where bill-of-materials cost stops being theoretical and you can actually quote a customer a price.

The quieter signal is the 9,000 actuators across 10+ SKUs. Figure is vertically integrating the actuator stack rather than buying from Harmonic Drive or Nabtesco, which is the same playbook Tesla ran on motors and the Chinese humanoid OEMs are running off the EV supply chain. For operators evaluating humanoid vendors in 2026, the question is no longer demo quality. It is who can ship 1,000 units against a PO, and who controls their own actuator line when the next bottleneck hits.

EconomicsMay 26

Tesla ‘Robotaxi’ fleet is actually shrinking, not growing, new data shows

Source: Electrek

Tesla's unsupervised Robotaxi fleet has dropped to 20 active vehicles (14 in Austin, 3 in Dallas, 3 in Houston) from 25 cumulative in late April, according to Robotaxi Tracker data. The total Tesla ride-hailing fleet including supervised Bay Area FSD vehicles has fallen to 34 active units, down from 165 in April, with Bay Area operations collapsing from 107 to 9 vehicles.

Why it matters

One year into commercial operation, Tesla cannot sustain 25 unsupervised vehicles on the road. The reported crash rate at roughly 4x human drivers explains the shrinkage: every additional vehicle adds miles, and miles add incidents that would trigger NHTSA scrutiny Tesla cannot afford during the FSD v15 transition. Pulling vehicles is the rational call, but it inverts the scaling narrative that underwrites the autonomy portion of Tesla's market cap.

The Waymo comparison is now structural, not rhetorical. 20 active vehicles in three cities versus roughly 3,000 across multiple metros, with a Magna-built Mesa line spinning up another 2,000 units. Tesla's bet remains that a vision-only stack with a software rewrite collapses the gap in 2026-2027. For operators modeling robotaxi supply, the takeaway is that geofence size and fleet count are downstream of validated crash rate, and no amount of hardware optionality fixes that until the per-mile safety number moves. Until then, Waymo is the only US operator with a deployable cost model.

LaunchesMay 21

Waymo halts freeway rides after robotaxis struggle in construction zones

Source: Transportation & Auto News | TechCrunch

The service suspension comes as Waymo has also paused operations in Atlanta and San Antonio after its robotaxis drove into flooded streets.

Why it matters

Waymo pulled freeway service in its four largest markets (SF, LA, Phoenix, Miami) less than six months after launching it, and the timing matters: freeway routing was the unlock for airport connections and the one million paid rides per week target by year-end 2026. Surface-street-only operation caps trip length and kills the peninsula commute use case that was driving Bay Area ride growth. Construction zones are the failure mode operators should have expected, since cones, lane shifts, and human flaggers are exactly the long-tail scenarios HD maps cannot pre-encode.

Stack this with the Atlanta and San Antonio flood pauses and the pattern is environmental edge cases compounding faster than Waymo can ship recalls. For competitors (Zoox, Tesla, and the Chinese players watching closely) the read is that L4 freeway deployment is gated by construction-zone perception, not policy. For Waymo's own roadmap, the Zeekr-built Ojai launch now arrives into a service map that is visibly contracting.

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