Waymo is planning its next step in the expansion of driverless ride-hailing, saying it will take a fleet of self-driving vehicles with no human attendant from testing to commercial operations within a few months in five cities nationwide. The expansion takes it to Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and San Antonio; it already serves Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta. Already in Miami, employees are experiencing what it’s like to ride without a safety operator, and other internal testing is planned for the other new markets before public access occurs.
What Cities Are Next in Waymo’s Robotaxi Expansion
Waymo’s next wave has its sights on two states that have hewed close to policies that favor autonomous vehicles: Texas and Florida. Dallas and Houston contribute fast arterials, elaborate frontage road networks, and aggressive freight traffic. Add to San Antonio difficult downtown grids and event-based congestion. In Miami, vehicles will have to navigate coastal weather, drawbridges, and the dense stretches of nightlife corridors; Orlando will offer traffic patterns heavy with tourists around theme parks and resorts.
The company says it completed its rider-only testing as it has done in its other markets, starting with employees in Miami before launching to the public. Protections for drivers:
- Uber and Lyft have long taken care of their drivers by providing vehicle purchase assistance or rentals.
Waymo has not announced a date for when it will go live with the service to consumers, which is similar to how it has launched past cities: cautiously, as it validates performance and gains the right regulatory clearances.
How Waymo Determines a City Is Ready for Service
In public, Waymo characterizes its approach to new markets as one of “baseline comparison”: its tight-knit teams will test the driver’s performance against a proven baseline set—such as the company’s hometown of Chandler, Arizona—and then further tweak it for local conditions. In practice, that can include adjusting perception for subtropical storms in South Florida, getting as much speed as possible on unprotected turns from one of Texas’s many arterial roads with multiple lanes, or learning locally particular city details like frontage road merges and reversible lanes.
The company’s development pipeline currently includes pilots or testing in Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, New York City, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., as well as international work in Tokyo and London. That breadth reflects a strategy designed to narrow the number of “unique” local behaviors that its AI has to learn as it scales up on ever more diverse road networks.
Safety and Regulation Come Into Focus as AVs Scale
Waymo’s expansions come at a time when concerns have grown around self-driving vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is actively monitoring how AVs and incidents with them are reported, and various state authorities keep refining their watchful gaze. Commercial robotaxi operations in California are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, while Florida law allows fully driverless operation on public roads and Texas has been supportive of AV testing and deployment through statewide rules.
Waymo stresses a safety case built on multiple layers: high-definition mapping and geofenced operating design domains, redundant sensing and compute, remote assistance protocols, and staged rollouts that start first with employees using it before the public. The company has also cited results from its public safety analyses that compare robotaxi crash and injury rates with human benchmarks—although methodologies, and whether such comparisons should be made on a city-by-city basis, continue to be the subject of industrywide debate among academics and regulators.
In a significant capacity change, Waymo recently turned on freeway portions for riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco—something that can reduce trip lengths while also introducing the system to decision-making at higher speeds.
In Texas and Florida, with their toll roads and freeways, those competencies will be more likely to play a role in getting around in sprawling metros.
Competitive Pressure Is Rising in Robotaxi Market
The timing is indicative of a more competitive environment. Zoox, which is owned by Amazon, has said it plans to begin providing limited public rides in San Francisco, at no cost at first to early adopters as it gathers data. Tesla has made no secret of robotaxi aspirations, teasing the idea even as it iterates its strict-supervision driver-assistance system, too—though fully driverless operations, and commercially permitted ones, are a different set of regulatory and technical hurdles.
And then there are the unit economics. Industry leaders have maintained that the business only functions with high utilization—vehicles in near-constant motion and minimized downtime. That’s a reality that plays into the hands of dense corridors with predictable demand—the very set of origin–destination pairs Waymo is targeting when it geofences early service zones.
What Riders Should Expect as Waymo One Expands
When the service debuts, riders are typically able to use a Waymo One app to request trips, and coverage areas gradually grow as the company clears operational hurdles. Limited access frequently comes via waitlists or test programs prior to full availability. In jurisdictions where highways are allowed, riders may experience faster trips as compared to routing with only surface streets.
When Waymo prepares to open up in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and San Antonio for the public, keep an eye out for three signs preceding its official launch:
- Employee-only vehicles driving with passengers, hands-free
- Increased area coverage and available hours of operation (or not)
- Partnership announcements adding pickup zones at mobility hubs, event venues, airports, or transit stations
Combined, they are a sign that the robotaxi network is approaching everyday usefulness, not just a tech demo.
If the company can deliver on time and if its safety record holds, this expansion will double the number of major U.S. metros where anyone can hail a fully autonomous ride—an important milestone for public perception, regulatory confidence, and the long-term economics of robotaxis.
