Waymo is taking the safety operators out of its fleet of robotaxis in Miami starting today, ahead of a commercial launch in 2026, the latest in a long series of steps taken this year to expand its nationwide footprint.<\/p>\n
The company said in a blog post<\/a> Tuesday it will start offering fully autonomous trips to employees in Miami. Over the next few weeks, Waymo said it will do the same in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.<\/p>\n This latest move comes just one week after Waymo announced a major milestone<\/a>: It is now offering paid rides on highways in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. This year has also seen Waymo launch in Atlanta and Austin with big-name partners like Uber, and launch a corporate travel program<\/a>.<\/p>\n Waymo\u2019s not the only company trying to scale a robotaxi service in the United States. Amazon-owned Zoox announced earlier Tuesday morning<\/a> it is about to start offering free rides in its purpose-built robotaxis to members of its early rider program in San Francisco. (It did the same<\/a> in Las Vegas in September.)<\/p>\n Tesla, meanwhile, has been trialing a service of its own in Austin for a few months. At one point this year, CEO Elon Musk tried to claim Tesla\u2019s robotaxi service would be available to half the country by the end of 2025. As of right now, his company\u2019s cars still have safety operators in the driver\u2019s seats.<\/p>\n Amid all that potential competition, Waymo is acting pretty confident.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t just built the technology; we\u2019ve developed the definitive playbook for operating autonomous fleets, across dozens of sites, and industry-leading end-to-end rider support,\u201d the company wrote in Tuesday\u2019s blog post. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco It will need that confidence as it heads into 2026, which is shaping up to be an even bigger year than 2025. In addition to the five aforementioned cities, Waymo plans<\/a> to start offering rides in Detroit, Las Vegas, San Diego, Nashville<\/a>, and London<\/a>. The company is also testing in New York City<\/a>, and has a permit to keep that up until at least the end of the year.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the end of 2026, you should expect us to be offering 1 million trips per week,\u201d co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said at TechCrunch Disrupt last month.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n