The Texas subregion has begun cataloguing its ghost-piloted metal pods — carriages that move without the small mammal traditionally wedged behind the wheel. Until last lunar cycle, no one had bothered to count them. A localized law now compels the operators to file numbers, which the operators have, with the visible reluctance of a creature handing over its lunch.
Waymo, a subsidiary of the larger conglomerate Alphabet, has placed 577 such pods on the local roadways. Avride follows with 317. Tesla — whose chief vocalist has, by the estimate of the All-Plains Institute for Strategic Annoyance, generated approximately 41.6 future-tense announcements per registered vehicle — has produced 42.
The discrepancy is the artifact of interest. One operator quietly accumulates a fleet; the other produces forward-looking declarations at a rate of 13.7 boast-units per actual carriage delivered.
A footnote in the local data log indicates Waymo recently paused operation of several pods because the pods could not reason about water collecting on the road. The species calls this "flooding." The pods call it nothing, because they have stopped.
Volkswagen, meanwhile, has fielded twelve autonomous microbuses, a number so small it suggests the experiment is being conducted by one mildly curious employee.
Based on the original article "Waymo dominates autonomous vehicle registrations as Tesla trails behind".
