EVwire brief: Waymo activated fully driverless rides in Las Vegas today, with Denver, San Diego, and Tampa set to follow in the coming weeks. Rides will start with Alphabet employees before opening to the public.
Waymo already runs driverless cars in more than 10 cities, and as of May, its domestic fleet included about 4,000 robotaxis running 5th and 6th-generation self-driving systems, as per U.S. safety filings.
Waymo announced the expansion on X:
Waymo first laid out plans for this four-city expansion back in December. Landing it now puts more distance between Waymo and its rivals. Zoox is preparing to open robotaxi rides to the public in Austin and Miami later this year, and Tesla is pushing beyond Austin into other parts of Texas and into Miami.
Context:
The expansion comes as Waymo works through some rough patches. Some of its cars have driven into flooded roadways during extreme weather, and over the Fourth of July, a batch of vehicles in San Francisco got stuck in traffic so long their batteries died, and one was caught driving into fireworks.
Waymo’s fleet on its four new markets is completely driverless.
Waymo raised $16 billion from Alphabet and other backers in February and has now logged more than 20 million autonomous rides, with a goal of 1 million weekly trips by year's end. London is next on the list, with the country expected to become its first international market later this year.
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