{"id":179408,"date":"2026-02-25T08:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T08:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/179408\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T08:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T08:44:18","slug":"san-antonio-riders-can-now-hail-self-driving-waymo-robotaxis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/179408\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio riders can now hail self-driving Waymo robotaxis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis<\/a> in San Antonio and four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding the territory covered by its fleet of self-driving cars to 10 major U.S. metropolitan markets.<\/p>\n

The move into Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, Florida, announced Tuesday, February 24, widens Waymo’s early lead in autonomous driving while rival services from Tesla and the Amazon-owned Zoox are still testing their vehicles in only a few U.S. cities.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Waymo’s robotaxis already provide more than 400,000 weekly trips in the six metropolitan areas where they have been transporting passengers: Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin.<\/p>\n

Waymo’s cars soft launched service<\/a> in San Antonio in November 2025, initially only offering the rides to employees. The company first began testing Alamo City\u2019s roads the previous May<\/a> as part of a multi-city \u201croad trip\u201d meant to map out roadways and help alleviate local concern over safety and other issues.<\/p>\n

Waymo operates its ride-hailing service through its own app in all the U.S. cities except Atlanta and Austin, where its robotaxis can only be summoned through Uber’s ride-hailing service.<\/p>\n

The expansion into four more markets marks a significant step toward Waymo’s goal to surpass 1 million weekly paid trips by the end of 2026. Without identifying where its robotaxis will be available next, Waymo is targeting a list of eight other cities that include Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit, and Boston while signaling its first overseas availability is likely to be London.<\/p>\n

To help pay for more robotaxis, Waymo recently raised $16 billion as part of the financial infusion that puts the value of the company at $126 billion. The valuation fueled speculation that Waymo may eventually be spun off from its corporate parent Alphabet, where it began as a secret project within Google in 2009.<\/p>\n

Although Waymo is opening up in four more cities, its robotaxis initially will only be made available to a limited number of people with its ride-hailing app in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, and Orlando before the service will be available to all corners in those markets.<\/p>\n

—
This article contains additional reporting from CultureMap San Antonio editor Brandon Watson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis in San Antonio and four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5406,39171,82,84,83,3621,840],"class_list":{"0":"post-179408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-innovation","9":"tag-ride-share","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","12":"tag-san-antonio-news","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-transportation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}