Self-driving cars are slowly becoming less sci-fi and more real-world as companies like Waymo, the driverless arm of Google's parent Alphabet, expand into more cities. On Tuesday, the robotaxi service stretched into more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, and it'll also be extending its reach in Los Angeles this week.
Now, Bay Area riders can hail a fully autonomous Waymo ride in Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae and Burlingame via the Waymo One app, and select riders can access Mountain View and more of Palo Alto and Menlo Park. And starting Wednesday, LA riders can use the ride-hailing service in Playa del Rey, Ladera Heights, Echo Park, Silver Lake and all of Sunset Boulevard. They can also go directly from Mid-City to Inglewood and Westchester via La Cienega and La Brea, expanding Waymo's LA County service area to over 120 square miles.
Waymo currently operates fully autonomous rides for the general public in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, which take place aboard the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. It's expanding its partnership with Uber by launching in Atlanta via the ride-share app later this year, and plans to begin offering rides in Washington, DC, and Miami starting in 2026. In April, Waymo said it'll begin driving its vehicles on Tokyo's streets, making this the company's first international location.
Along with those launches, Waymo in January announced it would also begin testing with manually driven vehicles in 10 new cities this year, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego. And in April, Waymo said it reached a preliminary agreement with Toyota to "explore a collaboration" geared toward developing autonomous driving tech, which could someday be factored into personally owned vehicles, too.
Waymo's expansion extends to its manufacturing facilities, too. In May, the company on Monday said it's opening a new, 239,000-square-foot autonomous vehicle factory in the Phoenix area. The plan is to add 2,000 more fully autonomous Jaguar I-Pace vehicles to its existing 1,500-vehicle fleet. Notably, Waymo indicated it received its "final delivery from Jaguar" earlier this year, as it plans for future iterations of its driverless rides. Waymo added that the "facility's flexible design" will allow it to integrate its upcoming sixth-generation self-driving technology into new vehicles, starting with the all-electric Zeekr RT.
In October, Waymo also announced it's partnering with Hyundai to bring the next generation of its technology into Ioniq 5 SUVs. In the years to come, riders will be able to summon those all-electric, autonomous vehicles using the Waymo One app.
Waymo says it provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week. I've hailed several rides myself in San Francisco and, as off-putting as it can seem at first (especially to see a steering wheel turn by itself), I quickly adjusted, and it soon felt like an ordinary ride.
That's not to say there hasn't been pushback as Waymo rolls out to more cities. The company's vehicles have been involved in a handful of high-profile collisions, including one with a bicyclist in San Francisco and another with a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (Waymo recalled and updated its software to address the issue.)
Waymo's Safety Impact report notes that over 71 million autonomous miles driven through March 2025, its Waymo Driver technology had 88% fewer crashes leading to serious injuries or worse and 78% fewer injury-causing crashes, compared to "an average human driver over the same distance in our operating cities." It also reported significantly fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians (93%), cyclists (81%) and motorcyclists (86%).
As Waymo continues to expand and develop its self-driving tech, here's how and where to summon the robotaxi if you happen to be in one of the few cities where the company currently operates its fleet.
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