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.
The company said in a blog post 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.
This latest move comes just one week after Waymo announced a major milestone: 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.
Waymo’s not the only company trying to scale a robotaxi service in the United States. Amazon-owned Zoox announced earlier Tuesday morning 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 in Las Vegas in September.)
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’s robotaxi service would be available to half the country by the end of 2025. As of right now, his company’s cars still have safety operators in the driver’s seats.
Amid all that potential competition, Waymo is acting pretty confident.
“We haven’t just built the technology; we’ve developed the definitive playbook for operating autonomous fleets, across dozens of sites, and industry-leading end-to-end rider support,” the company wrote in Tuesday’s blog post.
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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 to start offering rides in Detroit, Las Vegas, San Diego, Nashville, and London. The company is also testing in New York City, and has a permit to keep that up until at least the end of the year.
“By the end of 2026, you should expect us to be offering 1 million trips per week,” co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said at TechCrunch Disrupt last month.
Waymo’s expansion hasn’t been flawless, though. The company’s tech is currently being probed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after one of its vehicles in Atlanta was filmed turning in front of a stopped school bus.
