Motional puts AI at center of robotaxi reboot as it targets 2026 for driverless service

Vegas robotaxi by end of 2026 is either bold or delusional, and I'm betting delusional. They've been saying "next year" since 2021. But here's what matters: someone's *finally* putting AI at the center instead of hand-crafted rules and HD maps. That's the shift.

The timeline will slip (it always does), but the approach change is real. If they actually ship with end-to-end learning instead of the old Waymo pipeline, that's worth paying attention to. We're in the era where you just ship and iterate.