A line of Waymo robotaxis drive down North Beach in San Francisco, California on July 7, 2026.
Heather Deal | Getty Images
Waymo plans to begin rolling out self-driving cars in four new cities in the coming weeks, furthering its U.S. expansion and building a lead over domestic rivals Tesla and Zoox. Amazon.
alphabet‘s robotaxi division will soon begin offering fully autonomous driving in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, Florida and Denver, the company announced Wednesday. It will initially launch for Alphabet employees, but will later be expanded to the general public.
Waymo, which first announced expansion plans last year, now operates self-driving cars in more than 10 cities. Waymo had a huge head start in the market; tesla and Zoox are both slowly expanding into new cities. Zoox is preparing to launch its robotaxi service to the public in parts of Austin, Texas and Miami later this year, and Tesla plans to expand beyond Austin to other parts of Texas and Miami.
As of May, Waymo’s domestic fleet included about 4,000 robotaxis equipped with the company’s fifth- and sixth-generation self-driving systems, according to filings with U.S. auto safety regulators.
Waymo’s latest announcement comes as the company faces challenges that arise as more cars hit the road. In addition to some vehicles plunging into flooded roads due to the extreme weather, many vehicles in San Francisco were stuck in traffic for so long that their batteries ran out during Independence Day, and some vehicles were seen crashing into fireworks.
Waymo raised $16 billion from Alphabet and other backers in February. The company, which plans to launch in its first international market, London, later this year, has completed more than 20 million self-driving trips in total and aims to achieve 1 million journeys per week by the end of the year.
—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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