Waymo is significantly accelerating its rollout. After years of slow and methodical expansion, the Alphabet-owned company is now moving at a faster speed, announcing today that it is bringing its autonomous driving technology to five new major cities, starting with Miami.
This comes just days after the company finally unlocked driverless freeway rides for passengers in its core markets.
For a long time, the criticism of Waymo was that while its technology was impressive, it couldn’t scale. It took them years to go from a geofenced area in Chandler, Arizona, to covering the full metro area of Phoenix and expanding to San Francisco.
But that narrative is officially dead.
In a press release titled “Safe, routine, ready: Autonomous driving in new cities,” Waymo confirmed it is launching operations in Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.
The company says operations start today in Miami, with the other four cities following in the “coming weeks.”
Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo’s co-CEO, commented on the expansion:
“Safe, routine, ready… We’ve built a generalizable Driver, powered by Waymo’s demonstrably safe AI, and an operational playbook to reliably achieve this milestone.”
It’s worth noting the distinction here between “operations” and “commercial rides.” Waymo says it is starting operations (likely testing) now, with plans to “open our doors to riders next year.” This aligns with their recent strategy in Austin and Atlanta, where they tested for a few months before opening up the app to the public.
Waymo’s Expansion Timeline
With today’s news, Waymo’s map is getting quite a bit more crowded – albeit with some asterisks. Here is the current breakdown of where the service is live and where it is coming next:
Live Commercial Service (Bookable now)
- Phoenix, AZ: Fully public. Includes freeway access.
- San Francisco, CA: Fully public. Includes freeway access.
- Los Angeles, CA: Fully public. Includes freeway access.
- Austin, TX: Commercial operations active (partnership with Uber).
- Atlanta, GA: Commercial operations active.
Imminent Launch / Testing Operations
- Miami, FL: Operations started Nov 18, 2025. Rider access in 2026.
- Dallas, TX: Operations starting late 2025. Rider access in 2026.
- Houston, TX: Operations starting late 2025. Rider access in 2026.
- San Antonio, TX: Operations starting late 2025. Rider access in 2026.
- Orlando, FL: Operations starting late 2025. Rider access in 2026.
The inclusion of three more Texas cities (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio) alongside Austin means Waymo is effectively aiming to cover the “Texas Triangle,” a massive transportation corridor.
It is made possible by Texas’s relaxed autonomous-driving laws.
This expansion follows the huge milestone earlier this month when Waymo began allowing rider-only trips on freeways in Phoenix, SF, and LA, a capability that is essential for competing with human Uber/Lyft drivers on longer routes.
Electrek’s Take
I sure hope we are going to start the calls of “Waymo can’t scale” fade away.
In the next few months, Waymo will be operating driverless in 10 of the biggest cities in the US.
No one else is doing that in North America right now. There are companies in China that have similar deployment capabilities, but that’s about it.
Tesla shareholders will try to tell you that the automaker is right on Waymo’s heels. Still, Tesla is currently operating something it calls “Robotaxi” that requires a safety driver inside at all times.
Even if Tesla is set up to scale faster, it is still not at square one when it comes to operating an autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service.
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