Waymo Launches Driverless Robotaxi Rides in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Denver in Its Biggest Four-City Push Yet
Waymo went fully driverless in Las Vegas and is bringing San Diego, Tampa, and Denver online next, pushing its network past 10 cities as it chases 1 million weekly rides by year-end.
Overview
Waymo began driving fully autonomously in Las Vegas this week, with San Diego, Tampa, and Denver set to follow, as the Alphabet-owned robotaxi company pushes its driverless network past its current footprint of more than 10 cities. According to Electrek, Waymo confirmed that Las Vegas vehicles are already running “with no human at the wheel,” with Denver, San Diego, and Tampa “to follow.”
What We Know
Waymo said in a statement quoted by CleanTechnica that it “will soon begin driving fully autonomously, without a human specialist behind the wheel, in our four latest cities: San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Denver. While these rider-only operations will initially be for employees, we expect to welcome the public soon. These cities will join a growing network of over 10 cities where anyone can simply download an app and hail a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle to go where they want, 24/7, across our sizable service areas.”
The four new markets stretch coast to coast — from San Diego on the West Coast to Tampa on the East Coast, with Denver and Las Vegas in between, as CleanTechnica noted. As with prior launches, the rollout follows a phased approach: Waymo employees ride first without a safety specialist behind the wheel, and public access follows once that validation period concludes, according to Engadget.
The expansion comes as Waymo’s fleet has grown to roughly 3,500 robotaxis that have together surpassed 20 million trips, according to Electrek. The company was providing around 500,000 paid rides per week across its existing markets earlier this year, Electrek reported, and Waymo has said it plans to reach 1 million weekly paid rides by the end of 2026. Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana has framed that milestone as an “inflection point” for the business, per Electrek.
Alongside the new cities, Waymo is introducing new vehicle hardware. The company said, as quoted by CleanTechnica, that it is “beginning to drive our newest vehicle—the Hyundai IONIQ 5—autonomously with a specialist present.” Waymo added that “our 6th-generation Waymo Driver is also adapting to new vehicle platforms. We’ve begun autonomously driving, with an autonomous specialist present, our growing fleet of Hyundai IONIQ 5 vehicles.” Separately, Waymo is also rolling out its Ojai robotaxi, which Electrek described as “the first vehicle Waymo designed from the ground up rather than retrofitting a consumer car,” built on the same 6th-generation Driver hardware.
The push follows Waymo’s $16 billion funding round at a $126 billion valuation earlier this year, which the company said would fund exactly this kind of city-by-city expansion, and builds on the 500,000-weekly-ride milestone it previously reported as it works toward the one-million-rides-a-week target.
What We Don’t Know
Waymo has not given specific calendar dates for when San Diego, Tampa, and Denver will follow Las Vegas into fully driverless operation, nor when public (non-employee) rides will open in any of the four cities. The company also has not said when the Hyundai IONIQ 5 or the Ojai vehicles will transition from specialist-supervised testing to fully autonomous service.
Analysis
The four-city launch is Waymo’s latest step in a rapid 2026 expansion that has already taken the company beyond its original Phoenix and San Francisco strongholds into a double-digit list of U.S. metro areas. Layering in two new vehicle platforms — the mass-market Hyundai IONIQ 5 and the purpose-built Ojai — at the same time as the geographic push suggests Waymo is trying to diversify its hardware supply chain while it scales toward the million-ride-a-week mark that its leadership has called an inflection point for the business.