A Waymo self-driving taxi cruises up Pine Street in San Francisco this summer.
San Diego, California – Waymo, the self-driving car company backed by Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced Monday that its driverless taxi service is expanding to San Diego, Detroit, and Las Vegas — a major step in the company’s growing national footprint.
The move comes after months of quiet testing on San Diego streets earlier this year. Waymo said the trials helped the company assess how its autonomous vehicles handle different driving conditions and city layouts. “We’ll arrive with a mixed fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE with the 5th-gen Waymo Driver and Zeekr RT vehicles equipped with our 6th-gen Waymo Driver,” the company said in a statement. “We’re coordinating closely with local officials as we expand to San Diego and look forward to collaborating with local partners while employing our step-by-step approach to expansion.”
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria welcomed the news, framing it as part of the city’s broader effort to embrace cleaner and more innovative modes of transportation. “By welcoming innovative and promising technologies like Waymo’s autonomous vehicle service, we’re exploring how to make transportation more accessible, more sustainable, and more connected for everyone in our community,” Gloria said in a statement posted on Waymo’s website.
For San Diego, the city’s growing tech presence has made it an attractive testing ground for emerging transportation technologies, but autonomous vehicles remain controversial in other California cities. San Francisco officials, for example, have clashed with the company over blocked traffic lanes and emergency response delays caused by driverless cars.
Waymo maintains that its gradual, data-driven rollout is designed to prevent those problems. The company plans to introduce a limited fleet first and expand only after local testing and feedback.
Waymo’s cars — already operating in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco — are equipped with an array of cameras, radar, and lidar sensors, allowing them to navigate without human drivers. Passengers use an app to hail rides, much like Uber or Lyft, though the vehicles operate fully autonomously in designated zones.
