Waymo
Education: https://ltad.com/
Ownership
Alphabet/Google
Status
Live to the public in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin & San Francisco, including paying public customers, & airport transfers (Phoenix). No minimum age (for guests), 18 for the booker.
Available Silicon Valley.
Announced Atlanta (2025), Miami (2026), Washington DC (2026), New York
Some early testing in New York & Seattle.
Announced testing Tokyo (2025)
May 2024: 50,000 paid trips a week
Vehicles
Announced that Geely will be one of their robotaxi vehicle partners.
Source: https://blog.waymo.com/2021/12/expanding-our-waymo-one-fleet-with.html
Announced that Hyundai will be one of their vehicle partners.
Source: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partnership/
Scale up
May 2023 - Across Waymo One, we are now serving over 10 thousand trips per week to public riders, not including employees. With this latest expansion, we intend for those numbers to accelerate rapidly to 10 times that scale by next summer (2024). More than 150 million people use ride-hail services in the U.S., and with Phoenix and San Francisco as two of the most lucrative and fastest-growing markets, Waymo One is well positioned for continued growth as we commercialize our technology.
Source: https://blog.waymo.com/2023/05/waymo-one-doubles-service-area-in.html
August 2024 - A Belgian group of transportation officials and industry experts from the automotive industry are in the San Francisco Bay Area and for the first time, a concrete answer to this question has been given, as one of the participants, Tim De Ceunynck, reports. Cedric Dupont, Program Management Director at Waymo, gave very clear guidelines. In addition to a stable legal framework, Waymo needs a local partner who is prepared to provide a budget of €100 million and plan a permanent deployment of the robotaxi fleet. Pilot projects are no longer desired
Customer experience
For an idea of their current (test) vehicles in Phoenix, these videos give a good introduction:
Distribution
Partnered with Uber - Source: https://blog.waymo.com/2023/05/waymo-and-uber-partner-to-bring-waymos.html
Strategic partnerships
Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies. Woven by Toyota will also join the potential collaboration as Toyota’s strategic enabler, contributing its strengths in advanced software and mobility innovation. This potential partnership is built on a shared vision of improving road safety and delivering increased mobility for all.
Toyota and Waymo aim to combine their respective strengths to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform. In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs). The scope of the collaboration will continue to evolve through ongoing discussions.
Source: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/04/waymo-and-toyota-outline-strategic-partnership
Personal ownership
Waymo self-driving taxis may be available for people to own in the future, CEO Sundar Pichai said on Thursday
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