Waymo

Open full sized image

Waymo develops autonomous driving technology and operates commercial robotaxi services in U.S. cities.

© Mario Tama/Getty Images News

Waymo is an American company and subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc. (GOOG, GOOGL) that develops and operates autonomous ride-hailing (“robotaxi”) services in multiple United States cities. A pioneer in self-driving technology, Waymo has expanded from an experimental Google research project into a commercial transportation service, even as questions remain about the safety, reliability, and potential transition from human-driven to driverless vehicles.

Waymo began in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, an initiative from tech giant Google to develop the company’s own self-driving technology. The company’s engineers outfitted a Toyota Prius with technology building on Google’s street mapping platform, creating highly detailed maps of areas served by the company’s vehicles that included lane markings, speed zones, street signs, and other roadway information. These maps, together with the vehicles’ lidar sensors and artificial intelligence (AI), position the cars to interpret their surroundings and interact with other vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, infrastructure, traffic signals, construction zones, and other essential roadway information.

In early 2009, engineers were challenged to design and implement a vehicle that could travel without human intervention along one of 10 different 100-mile routes in California. By mid-2010, they had successfully completed all 10 routes—with a human safety driver ready to take control if necessary. In 2012, a modified Google Prius received the first U.S. license for a self-driving vehicle, issued by Nevada. By that August, Google’s fleet had logged more than 300,000 miles of autonomous testing.

Open full sized image

The Firefly was the first self-driving vehicle designed and built by Waymo.

Petersen Automotive Museum, petersen.org

In 2016, Google’s self-driving car project became Waymo, a separate subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc., Google’s parent company. In 2017 the company launched its Early Rider program, deploying its vehicles to the roads of Phoenix, Arizona, for a public trial of a robotaxi program. Building off that trial, Waymo debuted Waymo One, a commercial robotaxi service that used a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans outfitted with Waymo’s self-driving technology, in the Phoenix metropolitan area. 

The company’s commercial operations grew in the years that followed. In 2020, Waymo opened its robotaxi service in the Phoenix metropolitan area to all members of the public through its smartphone app. In 2021, Waymo expanded testing to San Francisco through its Trusted Tester program, which invited select members of the public to try the service and provide feedback. In 2022, the company began offering fully driverless rides to employees and later launched commercial service for select members of the public in San Francisco. In Phoenix, the company added fully driverless rides to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, without a human safety driver behind the wheel.

In 2023, Waymo added Los Angeles to its network, beginning limited testing in that city with autonomous rides for employees. It expanded its Arizona operations to cover a 180-square-mile service area in the Phoenix-Scottsdale metropolitan area, creating the world’s largest fully autonomous, paid ride-hailing service area. That same year, the company continued its transition toward an all-electric fleet, replacing the Pacifica minivan with the fully electric Jaguar I-PACE. Service in San Francisco and Los Angeles was opened to the general public in 2024, expanding beyond previous user networks of employees and Trusted Testers.

In June 2026 the company began carrying passengers in its sixth-generation Ojai robotaxis. The new vehicles, based on a model from Chinese automaker Geely, incorporated updated cameras, radar, and lidar sensors designed to improve navigation in adverse weather conditions, making them suitable for the company’s planned expansion into northern U.S. cities. During 2026, Waymo expanded its robotaxi service to additional U.S. cities, including Orlando, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, and Tampa. By October, the company was operating in more than a dozen U.S. metropolitan areas, with plans to introduce service in London and Tokyo.

The program has not been without problems. A widespread power outage in San Francisco in December 2025 forced a temporary shutdown of Waymo service. As thousands of residents lost power and traffic signals went dark, Waymo robotaxis recorded nearly 1,600 stoppages lasting at least two minutes, blocking traffic and contributing to widespread gridlock. Dozens of vehicles required manual retrieval after requests for assistance from remote operators overwhelmed Waymo’s response system.

The safety of Waymo’s driverless vehicles has also drawn scrutiny, particularly as the company expands its operations. Some 40,000 people die in traffic collisions in the United States each year, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data, and Waymo frames autonomous technology as a way to reduce traffic deaths by eliminating human error from the driving process. For example, a 2024 study conducted by Waymo-affiliated researchers and published in the peer-reviewed journal Traffic Injury Prevention found an 80% lower rate of crashes involving reported injuries compared with human-driven vehicles, based on 7.1 million miles driven by the company’s driverless vehicles.

Researchers caution, however, that the available data are insufficient to draw definitive conclusions about the company’s overall safety performance, particularly since:

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Waymo robotaxis repeatedly passed stopped school buses in Austin, Texas, during the 2025–26 school year, while their stop signs were extended and students were boarding or exiting. The incidents led to a federal safety investigation and a December 2025 software recall affecting approximately 3,100 vehicles. 

In January 2026, a driverless Waymo struck a nine-year-old pedestrian near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California. The child sustained minor injuries, and both NHTSA and the NTSB opened investigations into the collision.

Waymo remains a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, which has continued to invest in its autonomous driving technology and growing robotaxi operations. The company also represents a real-world application of Google’s advances in artificial intelligence, as Alphabet works to turn a long-running research project into a transportation business beyond its core Internet services.