Waymo plans to launch robot taxi service in Detroit, Las Vegas and San Diego in 2026

Waymo's robot taxi service is accelerating its expansion: Google's sister company has now announced that it will also launch in Detroit, Las Vegas and San Diego next year. Together with its existing markets and other announcements, Waymo is likely to serve a dozen cities soon.

Perhaps in light of Tesla’s plans to establish its own robot taxi service, Waymo now wants to expand its network even faster than previously announced. Just a few days after announcing its intention to enter London, its first city outside the US, Waymo has now also announced its launch in three other major US cities next year: Detroit, Las Vegas and San Diego.

These three cities will join the five existing US cities of Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta, where Waymo already operates 250,000 autonomous trips per week. Launches in Dallas, Denver, Miami, Nashville and Washington, DC have also been announced. Adding up all the announcements and existing cities, this brings the total to twelve US cities plus London.

In Las Vegas, Waymo will face competition from Zoox: after lengthy preparations, the Amazon subsidiary launched its first robot taxi service there in September. Zoox’s specially developed vehicle has no steering wheel, pedals or driver’s seat and can transport up to four people.

Waymo’s vehicle fleet currently consists of fully electric Jaguar i-Pace EVs converted at its own factory, with fully electric minivans from Zeekr and specially prepared Hyundai Ioniq 5s set to be added soon. Waymo’s hardware suite most recently consisted of 13 cameras, four lidar sensors and six radars to create a 360° view for the autonomous vehicle. In contrast, Tesla CEO Elon Musk relies solely on cameras for autonomous driving, which is cheaper, but raises doubts about the safety of the technology.

Waymo has already tested its autonomous vehicles in winter conditions in preparation for the launch in Detroit to ensure that the robotaxis can operate safely there even in heavy snowfall. Test drives were also conducted on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, north of Detroit.

insideevs.com, waymo.com (Detroit), waymo.com (Las Vegas), waymo.com (San Diego)

This article was first published by Florian Treiß for electrive’s German edition.