Robotaxi Boom Forces Cities to Rethink Grids, Roads and Rules

A Climate Week NYC panel brought together the CEO building robotaxi charging depots, New York's top energy official and a Los Angeles deputy mayor to map the collisions ahead as autonomous fleets scale from thousands to millions — and the infrastructure, regulations and power systems that aren't ready for them.

• Volterra building network of urban robotaxi depots drawing 8 megawatts each, already participating in grid demand response
• NYSERDA chief says AV fleets could cut grid peak demand by over 20%, calls vehicle-to-grid technology a "game changer"
• LA deputy mayor details friction between cities and California state regulators over AV oversight, data sharing
• 2028 Los Angeles Olympics emerges as proving ground — and pressure test — for autonomous vehicle deployment at scale
• Panelists agree public fear of robotaxis fades with real-world exposure, but tolerance for even one incident remains near zero

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Charging the Robot Fleet: Volterra's Half-Acre Urban Depots

Why it matters: Autonomous ride-hail vehicles don't go home at night — they need dedicated urban facilities for charging, cleaning, data offload and maintenance, creating a new category of urban infrastructure and a massive new source of electricity demand.

Where things stand: Frank Reig, CEO of Volterra and former CEO of the electric moped company Revel, described a hub-and-spoke model purpose-built for robotaxi fleets. "A typical site for us is maybe half an acre to an acre near the urban center where there's a lot of rideshare pickup and demand. And it may have 40 to 60 fast charging stalls," he said. Each spoke site draws roughly 8 megawatts of power. Larger hubs outside city centers handle deep maintenance — tire changes, major repairs — while the smaller spoke sites handle the daily cycle of charging, cleaning and data offload. In a city the size of New York, Reig estimated there could eventually be 50 such spoke sites.

His core pitch to AV platform companies: outsource this infrastructure layer so you can focus on commercializing the technology on time and on budget. Reig argued that the economics and complexity of the vehicles will keep the autonomous world fleet-controlled for the foreseeable future. "This is not an $18,000 Toyota Camry," he said. "This is a complex piece of — it's essentially a robot that needs to be cleaned properly with the right sensors and the right programming."

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Batteries on Wheels: NYSERDA Sees Robotaxis as Grid Assets

The basics: Transportation accounts for 40% of final energy use in New York State. Unlike personal vehicles, which sit idle 95% of the time, autonomous ride-hail fleets run continuously — creating enormous charging demand but also enormous potential for grid flexibility.

Why it matters: New York's grid reserve margins are tightening as electrification accelerates across buildings, vehicles and industry. Treating robotaxi fleets as controllable loads — and eventually as mobile batteries that can inject power back into the grid — could defer billions in transmission and generation investment.

Where things stand: Doreen Harris, President and CEO of NYSERDA, framed the opportunity in stark terms. "Flexible load actually is a huge way in which we can reduce investments in our grid, but also, the flexible load can reduce peaks by 20-plus percent as well," she said. Harris highlighted a $60 million New York Green Bank investment in charging infrastructure, "notably in underserved communities."

Both Harris and Reig expressed enthusiasm for vehicle-to-grid technology, where fleet vehicles would not just reduce their charging during peak hours but actively send power back to the grid. Reig revealed that Volterra's sites already participate in Con Edison's demand response program. "We sort of shaved our power way down during certain periods of the day to provide resilience to the grid," he said. He went further: "I think the future is, okay, these aren't actually autonomous ride-hail vehicles, they're batteries on wheels."

Harris described NYSERDA's major V2G investments as "a game changer" at scale, and endorsed the model pioneered by London's Octopus Energy — which pays EV owners to shave peak demand — as a blueprint for New York. "We need to follow that model to identify those value streams and embed them so as to impact operating performance, consumer behavior, and ultimately the market conditions for the investment," she said, framing this as her 2030 vision.

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Cities vs. Sacramento: LA's Fight for AV Oversight

The basics: California chose to regulate autonomous vehicles at the state level through the CPUC and DMV, largely sidelining local governments — a decision that created significant friction with cities responsible for public safety and street management.

Why it matters: The question of whether state or local governments control AV deployment has direct implications for emergency response, traffic management, data access and the pace of innovation. With the 2028 Olympics approaching, Los Angeles faces unique pressure to get this right.

Where things stand: Randall Winston, Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, gave a detailed account of the regulatory tug-of-war. Early on, Mayor Karen Bass and the San Francisco city attorney pushed for more data-sharing authority and regulatory control. "We didn't come out on top in that regulatory proceeding," Winston said. Voluntary data sharing with LAFD and LAPD has since improved, but it remains uncodified.

Winston illustrated why local control matters with a vivid example: "LA Marathon happens, right, and in one of the residential streets, there was a robotaxi that had kind of bricked or just stalled and created this massive sort of series of congestion around it." Without data access and planning authority, cities are left reacting to such incidents rather than preventing them.

LA has responded by building its own digital infrastructure. Winston described the city's "Code the Curb" program: "We're putting our curbs, our signs, and everything related to our public right-of-way, digitizing those assets, and we're eager to work with companies in this space as we roll that out." He also noted that LA is developing its first-ever capital infrastructure plan — a sign of how much the city's physical systems need to evolve.

Reig drew on his experience launching shared electric mopeds at Revel to reinforce the case for proactive engagement. "Can you imagine launching 60 shared electric mopeds in New York and not talking to Department of Transportation and NYPD and the mayor's office before that happened? Of course I did," he said, advocating staged rollouts with guardrails and early regulator relationships.

Winston noted movement at the state level toward allowing greater local oversight, though nothing has been formalized yet.

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The Trust Problem: One Incident Is One Too Many

Why it matters: Public backlash after even a single AV incident can trigger policy reversals, meaning consumer trust is as strategically important as technical safety for the industry's survival.

Where things stand: The panel's moderator, from Bloomberg NEF, framed the challenge bluntly: "Even if the AVs show much lower number of incidents, the fact is one is too much for an AV." The moderator noted that the public appetite for any robotaxi incident is extremely low, with each one creating disproportionate backlash that reverberates into policy.

Winston described the evolution in Los Angeles. In 2023–24, high-profile accidents in San Francisco swung public opinion sharply negative, compounded by the perception that the state was overriding local concerns. But as vehicles became more common in LA, attitudes shifted. "People have seen the vehicles more. They see them on their way to school. Day-to-day life, they're safer. They obey traffic laws. They aren't cutting me off," he said.

Reig made the case through personal anecdote. "My sister recently visited San Francisco and took a Waymo, and I could tell you before she took one, she was like, Who would ever get — and this is crazy. I would never want this in my town. And now she's like, when is Waymo expanding to Marin County?" he said. He advocated limited deployments with guardrails as the best path to build trust.

Harris connected AV adoption to the broader energy transition, noting that trust follows an S-curve and is built locally. "Who do people trust? They trust their neighbors, right? They trust their local governments. So this has to happen somewhat in a way of personal experience, of information sharing among people," she said.

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Eyes on 2028 and 2030

Why it matters: The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will be the first global mega-event where autonomous vehicles operate at significant scale — a proving ground that could accelerate or stall adoption worldwide.

Where things stand: Winston described the Olympics as "a tremendous opportunity to sort of prove the benefits, the usefulness, the utility in this kind of very different environment." He envisioned a seamless LAX trip combining AVs, air taxis and LA's new subway system — "hopefully that trip, both between AVs, air taxis and our new subway system, that ride being smooth and seamless."

The moderator provided scale: Bloomberg NEF projects 15 million robotaxis globally by 2040. "That's just about 1% of the 1.68 billion passenger vehicles that we see on the road around the world," they said. Today, only two countries — the United States and China — have fully commercialized robotaxi operations, with roughly 10,000-plus vehicles on the road and an estimated 16,000 by year-end.

Reig focused on geographic expansion: "The entire North is almost shut off to AV. And I think it's time to work together, sit at a table, figure out a plan forward." Harris zeroed in on the regulatory and market structures needed to unlock the full value of electrified fleets by 2030, pointing again to the Octopus Energy model.

Audience members raised important forward-looking concerns: whether personally owned AVs could increase urban sprawl and undermine transit ridership, how sensor degradation in aging fleets could erode safety, and cybersecurity risks. Reig responded to the sprawl question by reiterating that the technology's complexity and cost make fleet ownership the dominant model for the foreseeable future — though he acknowledged that fleet and personal ownership could eventually coexist, much as half of New York's Uber and Lyft vehicles today are already fleet-owned.