A line of Waymo robotaxis drives via North Seashore on July 7, 2026 in San Francisco, California.
Heather Diehl | Getty Photographs
Waymo will start rolling out its driverless autos in 4 new cities within the coming weeks, furthering its U.S. growth and constructing on its lead over home rivals Tesla and Zoox, which is owned by Amazon.
Alphabet‘s robotaxi division will quickly begin providing totally autonomous rides in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, Florida, and Denver, the corporate stated Wednesday. Whereas the launch will initially be for Alphabet workers, the rollout will then prolong to the general public.
Waymo, which first introduced the growth plans final yr, at present operates driverless vehicles in additional than 10 cities. Whereas Waymo has an enormous head begin out there, Tesla and Zoox are each slowly pushing into new cities. Zoox is making ready to launch its robotaxi service to some members of the general public in Austin, Texas, and Miami later this yr, and Tesla goes past Austin into different components of Texas in addition to to Miami.
As of Could, Waymo’s home fleet included about 4,000 robotaxis outfitted with the corporate’s fifth- and sixth-generation automated driving methods, in response to filings with U.S. auto security regulators.
Waymo’s newest announcement comes as the corporate confronts challenges which are arising as extra of its vehicles hit the highway. A few of its autos have pushed into flooded roadways following excessive climate occasions, and through the Fourth of July celebrations, various autos in San Francisco had been caught in site visitors for therefore lengthy that their batteries died, whereas one other was seen driving into fireworks.
In February, Waymo raised $16 billion from Alphabet and different backers. The corporate plans to start service in London, its first worldwide market, later this yr, having pushed greater than 20 million total autonomous rides, with its sights set on hitting 1 million weekly journeys by the top of the yr.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
