Waymo

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.

Robotaxi network Waymo is continuing to expand the reach and capabilities of its driverless vehicles to public riders in new cities. Today, the Alphabet, Inc. subsidiary announced freeway trips in three major US cities, as well as an expansion of its service availability in a familiar region.

Autonomous taxi company Waymo faced scrutiny last month when a car was caught on video illegally passing a stopped school bus that was letting children off in Atlanta. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into it.

Fully autonomous technology developer Waymo continues to expand the reach of its test fleet as well as bona fide customer rides without a driver present. This morning, Waymo shared plans to expand across the pond to London, with public robotaxi rides expected sooner than you might think.

Waymo has poached a top Tesla audio engineer to lead the In-car Audio and Infotainment experience inside its autonomous vehicles.

Fully autonomous technology developer Waymo announced a new partnership with rideshare network Lyft to offer driverless robotaxi rides to customers in Nashville, Tennessee.

Waymo has announced an upcoming expansion in Dallas, Texas, and a new partnership with car rental giant Avis to provide fleet maintenance.

Tesla started a dick measuring contest with Waymo, and it is losing. The Alphabet company is expanding its service area in Austin beyond Tesla’s recently updated penis-shaped service area.

Waymo is taking a few shots at Tesla in the announcement, too.

Waymo is once again expanding its driverless taxi service areas in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, adding over 80 square miles total between the three areas.

The move comes less than a week before the tentative, much-anticipated launch of Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, another market that Waymo operates in.

Bloomberg has just released an embarrassingly bad report about the self-driving space, in which it claimed Tesla has an advantage over Waymo by misrepresenting data.

At least 5 Waymo self-driving I-Pace electric cars were set on fire amid protests that turned violent in Los Angeles this weekend.

It could represent as much as 5% of Waymo’s fleet in Los Angeles being destroyed.

Waymo announced plans to more than double its fleet of self-driving I-PACE electric vehicles by the end of next year.

Waymo has released new research saying that its driverless robotaxis reduce pedestrian- and cyclist-involved collisions by 82%-92%, and crashes that involve an injury by 96%, when compared to the average driver.

Waymo and Toyota have announced a partnership aimed at competing with Tesla in the development of personally owned self-driving vehicles.

John Krafcik, Waymo founder and former CEO, clapped back at Tesla CEO Elon Musk after his comments on Waymo at Tesla’s earnings earlier this week.

He brought a little dose of reality to Musk’s delusions.

Starting today, the fully autonomous Waymo One ride service is available exclusively to customers in Austin, Texas through the Uber app. Today’s news builds upon Waymo’s existing partnership with Uber and is a milestone in the robotaxi startup’s expansion to new cities around the US.

Chinese EV Automaker ZEEKR is marking its third consecutive presence on the display floors of CES. During this year’s event, ZEEKR began teasing at least three new models scheduled to launch in 2025, some of which will feature an NVIDIA DRIVE Thor-based smart driver domain controller. In addition to those codenamed models, ZEEKR is also planning to launch another NVIDIA DRIVE Thor-equipped EV called “RT” in the US to be used by robotaxi developer Waymo.

There are still many questions surrounding the plausibility of full-fledged autonomous robotaxi operations around the world, but Waymo, one of the current leaders in the segment, is putting at least one stigma to rest. A new study conducted with the help of reinsurance provider Swiss Re used hundreds of thousands of liability claims to demonstrate that robotaxi vehicles using the Waymo Driver platform deliver significantly higher safety performance than vehicles operated by a human driver.

Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo is going overseas for the first time and testing its tech in Japan. In early 2025, the company will begin testing its Jaguar I-PACE vehicles in Tokyo, with plans to stay in the region for the foreseeable future.

As promised, robotaxi developer Waymo is expanding its Waymo One service to new US cities. The latest on its service map is Miami, which will see a start of robotaxi testing operations next year before Waymo opens up public rides to all customers. ¡Hasta pronto, Miami!

Waymo has opened up its driverless taxi service to everyone in Los Angeles, without need for an invite code or waitlist, but it still remains with the same service area it had before and doesn’t yet cover the whole area around LA.