Waymo is adding four new US cities to the gradual rollout of its robotaxi service. As reported by , the company said it has already started trialling self-driving cars in Philadelphia, albeit with a human safety monitor, and that it will now commence similar manual tests in Baltimore, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.
After the initial supervisory and data-collecting stage, the plan is to deploy fully autonomous vehicles, as Waymo recently did in Miami, ahead of launching in five new cities across Texas and Florida in 2026. Waymo’s taxis currently accept passengers in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta, Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area, and it recently announced that San Diego, Las Vegas and Detroit would soon be joining them.
Also key to the company’s aggressive nationwide expansion is New York City, even if a fully functioning robotaxi service is likely still some way off. New York state law currently prohibits the operation of vehicles without a driver behind the wheel, but back in August, Waymo was temporarily the permit needed to be able to test autonomous vehicles in parts of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. The testing phase ran until late September, marking the first time a permit for the “testing deployment” of AVs in the city had been signed off.
Waymo has international ambitions too. Next year it will partner with to launch a robotaxi service in London, which will be its first major expansion outside the US. Fully driverless cars are currently banned in the UK, but new legislation will begin a long regulatory process that starts with government-approved robotaxi pilots in the Spring.
