From Motown to Sin City, Waymo is making moves
Waymo, the autonomous driving technology company, is significantly expanding its US footprint by announcing plans to launch its fully autonomous ride-hailing service in three major U.S. metropolitan areas sometime in 2026: Detroit, San Diego, and Las Vegas. The simultaneous announcements signal an aggressive push beyond Waymo’s established markets and a focus on adapting its technology to diverse geographic and climate challenges, including winter weather.
This three-city expansion (Detroit, San Diego, and Las Vegas) represents a major scaling effort for the company, adding substantial new markets to Waymo’s existing footprint of five US operational cities (Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta). These new launches join a growing list of confirmed “coming soon” locations including Miami, Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Nashville, indicating a broad national rollout strategy focusing on major population centers across the Eastern and Southern U.S.
Back in August, Waymo signaled a desire to bring their driverless taxis to “more people, sooner” and the recent flurry of new city announcements (both in the US and abroad in London & Tokyo) seem to be making that a reality. Given their transparency and safety record so far, we look forward to seeing these vehicles on more streets soon.
