Waymo to expand self-driving testing across more US cities
Alphabet-owned Waymo plans to test its autonomous taxis in cities including Las Vegas and San Diego this year.
Waymo will test its self-driving taxis with trained human autonomous specialists behind the wheel.
Waymo is preparing to test its self-driving taxis in more than 10 new cities across the U.S.
The self-driving-technology company owned by Google parent Alphabet on Wednesday said that Las Vegas and San Diego will be the first additional cities where it will be testing its services in 2025. The company is currently conducting tests in Truckee, Calif.; the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; upstate New York as well as Tokyo.
During these training trips, the company sends a limited fleet of vehicles to each city, with trained human autonomous specialists behind the wheel. “Our testing will begin with manual driving through the densest and most complex parts of each city, including city centers, and freeways," the company said in a statement.
Waymo’s move to prepare for a broader scale in the U.S. came less than two months after it said it would bring its Waymo One cars to Miami in early 2025, and start offering rides in 2026 through a new fleet partnership with vehicle-financing company Moove.
“With Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles now fully open to the public, the opportunity to provide safe and sustainable transportation for more riders has never been greater," the company said in December.
Overall in 2024, Waymo served over 4 million fully autonomous rides, providing 150,000 trips a week across Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.
Waymo announced its expansion plan shortly before Tesla published its results for the fourth quarter, in which Elon Musk’s company said it expects to launch its robotaxi business later this year in parts of the U.S.
Waymo and other self-driving companies face a bumpy regulatory landscape and a growing number of competitors, including Amazon’s Zoox, which is also building out robotaxi technology and services to get riders in self-driving cars. Ride-hailing companies Uber Technologies and Lyft have also sought entry into the market, but the companies seem far away from perfecting the technology.
Write to Sabela Ojea at sabela.ojea@wsj.com
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