Waymo is bringing its robotaxis to the office, announcing a new business-focused service on Wednesday that will allow companies to order the autonomous vehicles for employees to get around town.
The push marks a move from consumer novelty to enterprise-grade ground transportation, with features tailored for travel managers — not early adopters.
What Waymo for Business really provides companies
The program provides organizations with a dashboard to set policies, manage budgets, and see usage, while workers still order rides through the Waymo One app or partner platforms in select cities. Businesses can subsidize visits, set parameters for pick-up and drop-off rules, establish service zones, and give out promo codes en masse to visiting customers or interview candidates. Prices are the same as consumer fares — no need to make room for a corporate markup.
Waymo is focusing at first on cities where it already operates a driverless service, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Among the early customers is Carvana, the online car seller based in Phoenix. The company has signaled plans to expand business access as operations open up in other metros, including Washington, D.C., and Miami.
Why this is important for travel managers
Enterprise travel leaders care about three things: being able to control costs, duty of care, and compliance. Waymo’s portal is a case in point for all three. Centralized, policy-based controls decrease out-of-policy trips. Live and archival trip data provide better incident response visibility and auditing. And with Waymo’s fleet being all-electric, businesses can also apply reduced tailpipe emissions to ground travel — as more and more ESG reporting frameworks, such as those cited by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, call for.
There is also an employee experience angle. Ride-sharing options make it easier for commuters to ditch parking fees and driving nerves, not to mention having a ride at the ready within mapped zones. Waymo has pointed out publicly that a significant portion of its riders already take robotaxis to commute; codifying corporate access could help make the behavior more widespread, and without corporations having to deal with the overhead of expensing one-off rides.
Stacking up against incumbents in managed travel
Today, managed ground transportation is largely a toss-up between Uber for Business and Lyft Business, which both have deep integrations with expense tools and travel platforms. Waymo’s move doesn’t displace those incumbents, but introduces an alternative where autonomous coverage is available. Along corridors where Waymo serves to and from large airports (i.e., Phoenix Sky Harbor, San Jose Mineta), companies can kick the tires on having AV rides along discrete corridors for repeatable lanes that have predictable timing and regular pick-up flows.
In the competitive wedge, the thing you are vying to maintain is not merely price. What you’re fighting for is control and consistency. AVs don’t take tips, come in uniform vehicles and in-car interfaces, and record machine-logged trip details by default. For policy-laden teams in finance, health care, or tech — industries that often host visitors and shuttle staff among regional offices — those features are as important as headline fares.
Safety, regulation and risk posture for autonomy
Autonomy is regulated at the state level, and driverless permits are issued by state agencies like California’s Public Utilities Commission and Department of Motor Vehicles. Waymo has relied on a data-heavy safety program and third-party research to benchmark crash rates against those of human drivers, publishing regular performance reports that corporate risk teams can assess in vendor reviews.
From a duty of care perspective, you can predesignate pick-up points and avoid high-risk areas — it’s worth noting. So too is the lack of variation from one vehicle to another, and even between sensor suites on vehicles — a contrast to human-driven networks that can make internal risk evaluations simpler to assess. Still, the coverage is all geofenced and capped by capacity; businesses will still have to navigate policies that mix AVs with traditional ride-hail, taxis, or shuttles.
Operational footprint and vicinity to airport corridors
Waymo’s commercial service extends beyond Phoenix, to Los Angeles and San Francisco as well, with pilots and early operations taking place in cities like Austin and Atlanta. Having access to popular nodes such as Phoenix Sky Harbor and San Jose Mineta extends its appeal at the outset for business travelers, and the company has said it will add San Francisco International Airport as operations grow.
For companies, being able to access an airport is the litmus test: If the AV can consistently complete a round trip between an office and an airport, then it will be relatively simple for them to try passenger service to corporate outer offices or inter-campus shuttles. Look for early deployments to focus on well-mapped routes, with repeatable pick-up logistics that lend themselves to automation’s predictable value.
What to watch next as Waymo courts enterprises
Traction will be indicated with three signals: integrations, coverage, and policy support. Adoption would be eased by natural merging with expense and booking ecosystems used by travel teams — in the case of SAP Concur, Navan or TravelPerk. Additional coverage in business-centric districts and around airports will broaden addressable use cases. And clear, shareable safety metrics will aid corporate risk committees in approving AVs for official travel.
Waymo doesn’t have to take over human-driven services to win enterprise share. If it can take ownership of predictable, high-frequency trips for employees and guests — but without disrupting corporate travel managers’ ability to control them, as they have long requested — autonomous rides could soon become a routine line in a corporate mobility program.