Self-driving cars are slowly becoming less sci-fi and more real-world as companies like Waymo, the autonomous arm of Google’s parent, Alphabet, expand into more areas. And on Tuesday, Waymo said it’ll be driving fully autonomously in five new cities, doubling the number of places in which its vehicles operate without a human behind the wheel.
Waymo currently offers fully autonomous rides to the general public in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas, through the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. The vehicles can be summoned either via the Waymo app or Uber, depending on the city.
Waymo’s expansions have ramped up in recent months. In an Aug. 29 blog post, Waymo said it’s “entering a new chapter and accelerating our commercial expansion.”
And last week, Waymo began driving passengers on freeways in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Last October, Waymo also announced it’s partnering with Hyundai to bring the next generation of its technology into Ioniq 5 SUVs. In the years to come, riders will be able to summon those all-electric, autonomous vehicles using the Waymo app. And in April, Waymo said it reached a preliminary agreement with Toyota to “explore a collaboration” geared toward developing autonomous driving tech, which could someday be factored into personally owned vehicles.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been pushback as Waymo rolls out to more cities. The company’s vehicles have been involved in a handful of high-profile collisions, including one with a bicyclist in San Francisco and another with a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (Waymo recalled and updated its software to address the issue.)
Waymo’s Safety Impact report notes that over the course of 71 million autonomous miles driven through March 2025, its Waymo Driver technology had 88% fewer crashes leading to serious injuries or worse and 78% fewer injury-causing crashes, compared with “an average human driver over the same distance in our operating cities.” It also reported significantly fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians (93%), cyclists (81%) and motorcyclists (86%).
As Waymo continues to expand and develop its self-driving tech, here’s how and where to summon the robotaxi if you happen to be in one of the few cities where the company currently operates its fleet.
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