Tech and AI
Nevada regulator grants three permits allowing up to 8,000 driverless taxis to carry paying passengers in Clark County
By Staff Writer | 22 August 2026
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved autonomous vehicle network company permits for Tesla, Waymo and Uber at a hearing on 20 August, opening paid driverless rides in the county that contains Las Vegas. Tesla's permit runs to 5,000 vehicles over twelve months and the other two to 1,000 each. Tesla's own chief engineer on the vehicle told the hearing the ceiling will not be reached.
The three permits were granted unanimously and together allow up to 8,000 driverless taxis to work Clark County over the next year. Uber will run its 1,000 through partnerships rather than a fleet of its own, using vehicles from Motional and from Zoox, which already holds a permit of its own for 100 vehicles. Waymo was cleared in July to run without a human aboard in Las Vegas; the new permit is what lets it charge for the ride.
A ceiling is not a forecast
The arithmetic in the headline belongs to the permits, not to any deployment plan, and the operator with the largest allowance said so on the record.
The 5,000 has always been a ceiling for us. I don't think we'll be in a position by this time next year to deploy 5,000 vehicles
Eric Early, chief engineer on the Cybercab at Tesla
He put a working expectation of about 2,500 vehicles inside a year, and said the constraint was not the driving software. Uber used its own time at the hearing to argue for a mixed network, in which driverless vehicles are added to a fleet that still carries human drivers so that supply can be brought on to meet peaks rather than all at once. That position sits against the approach taken by the other two and doubles as a hedge, since Uber depends on partners for the vehicles themselves.
The objection on the record
Local livery and taxi operators opposed all three applications, and their objection is worth reading by anyone watching how other regulators will handle the same question.
These applications raise two grave concerns. One deals with the oversaturation of the commercial transportation industry as a whole in Nevada.
Kimberly Maxson-Rushton, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Livery Operators Association of Las Vegas
The second concern she put to the authority was road capacity, and in particular the area between the airport and Las Vegas Boulevard where most of the testing has been done. Neither point turns on whether the vehicles drive safely. Both turn on how many licensed vehicles a market can absorb, which is a question the authority has always answered for taxis and limousines and is now answering for vehicles with nobody in the driving seat.
Why it matters beyond Nevada
Three operators competing for the same passengers in one county is a first, and it converts a testing question into an operating one. The authority has granted volume rather than approved a technology, and volume is what will be measured against it: charging point provision, cleaning and maintenance depots, kerbside space and the effect on the drivers already licensed there. Uber's own chief for autonomous mobility and delivery, Sarfraz Maredia, confirmed the approval on the day.
What the permits fix is the permission. What happens next is a deployment schedule none of the three has published, against a ceiling one of them has already said in public it will not reach.