Waymo Hits Summer Break With Coast-to-Coast Expansion

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Waymo continues its big year of expansion. Far more than any previous year, Waymo is launching robotaxi service in city after city in 2026, and now there are four more where it is about to open up customer service.

The cities range from San Diego on the West Coast to Tampa on the East Coast. I did see a Waymo in Tampa a couple months ago, but we already had news at that point that Waymo was testing there in preparation for this launch. In between those two cities, Waymo is also preparing to launch robotaxi service in Mile High City (Denver) and Mile Low … er, Sin City (Las Vegas).

“Waymo will soon begin driving fully autonomously, without a human specialist behind the wheel, in our four latest cities: San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Denver. While these rider-only operations will initially be for employees, we expect to welcome the public soon. These cities will join a growing network of over 10 cities where anyone can simply download an app and hail a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle to go where they want, 24/7, across our sizable service areas. If you’re in one of these four new cities, download the app to be notified when it’s time to ride.”

One thing that just crossed my mind: in how many cities does Waymo have employees? It has this initial rollout to employees first every time, but it surely doesn’t have offices in all of these cities. Perhaps there are just employees deployed to each new city to ride along and do one final test of the service before it goes into full commercial operation? Anyway, that’s a side tangent….

The company also announced that it is starting to use its Hyundai IONIQ 5 robotaxi vehicles. “We’re also beginning to drive our newest vehicle—the Hyundai IONIQ 5—autonomously with a specialist present,” the company said. “Beyond confidently navigating new cities, our 6th-generation Waymo Driver is also adapting to new vehicle platforms. We’ve begun autonomously driving, with an autonomous specialist present, our growing fleet of Hyundai IONIQ 5 vehicles. This phase allows us to validate our technology for fully autonomous operations as we work to bring riders even more ways to enjoy Waymo in the future.”

I look forward to seeing the Zeekr/Ojai and Hyundai IONIQ 5 vehicles in the real world someday, especially when looking at Waymo’s superb safety record compared to human drivers in the same places at the same times.