Waymo expands its LA & SF service areas, with Austin coming soon

Waymo is adding to its driverless taxi service areas in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is currently testing in Austin in advance of offering rides to the public soon.

While we’re all waiting for the perpetually-delayed Tesla robotaxi or actually autonomous FSD, Waymo, Google’s driverless robotaxi service, has been offering private self-driving taxi rides to the public in its autonomous electric I-Pace vehicles for some time now.

The cars currently only work in certain geofenced areas that have been well-mapped by Waymo, in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But today, Waymo is adding coverage for new chunks of LA and the SF Bay Area, increasing coverage by about 26 miles total between the two areas.

San Francisco got a relatively modest addition of 10 square miles, mostly covering Daly City just south of the city proper.

In Los Angeles, the expansion is a little more significant, covering Westwood, Marina Del Rey, Hollywood, Chinatown, and filling in some more areas South of the 101 and some bigger chunks of Culver City.

Notably, two of the new regions are associated with student populations – Westwood, which is full of UCLA students, and Playa Vista/Del Rey, where many Loyola Marymount students live.

Late last year, we tested Waymo’s driverless taxi on a chaotic Venice Beach weekend, and came away quite impressed at what the car could do, despite some serious challenges – and a few big mistakes. We’ve got a long writeup and video of the experience if you’d like to see more.

But at this point, the system is open to the public, so you can also just ride it yourself if you’re in one of the covered areas.

In Phoenix, Waymo covers 315 square miles, including Sky Harbor airport, and has partnered with Uber for Uber rides and certain UberEats deliveries. Both in Phoenix and San Francisco, rides are available by downloading the Waymo One app.

In Los Angeles, you can also download the Waymo One app, but Waymo is currently working through a waitlist of ~150,000 passengers, inviting them to join the service in chunks. So you’ll have to wait a bit, but signing up to wait doesn’t cost anything.

And in Austin, the service is not yet ready, but Waymo has said that it will come “later this year,” which the company reiterated today. It’s currently testing vehicles with employee riders, but you can get on the waitlist in Austin through the app as well.

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