A Waymo driverless vehicle charges at a Waymo charging station in Santa Monica, California, USA on May 30, 2025.
Daniel Cole | Reuters
of the alphabet Waymo announced Thursday that it will soon start manually driving its robotaxi fleet in Minneapolis, Tampa and New Orleans.
Google’s sister company plans to begin test drives with human drivers in those three towns, with the aim of launching driverless robotaxi services there as early as next year, the company said.
Once Waymo begins operating in these markets next year, the robotaxi company’s 2026 expansion list will reach 15 cities.
Waymo announced Tuesday that it plans to begin operating driverless vehicles in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Miami and Orlando in the coming weeks, with plans to launch service to the public next year. The company also previously announced plans to expand to Detroit, Denver, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Diego, Washington DC, and London in 2026.
A spokesperson said Waymo will wait until the technology is validated in Minneapolis, Tampa and New Orleans before committing to a 2026 launch.
“While there is a lot of focus on 2026, we will proceed based on our safety framework,” Waymo spokesman Ethan Teicher said in an email.
Waymo’s robotaxi service takes more than 250,000 paid rides each week and currently operates in the Austin, San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Los Angeles markets. The company has provided more than 10 million paid rides since its launch in 2020.
Waymo last week began offering freeway routes in the San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles markets. The company said it will gradually expand highway travel to more passengers and locations over time.
The challenging conditions of operating at such high speeds made the addition of freeway rides an important milestone for Waymo and the robotaxi industry. Next year, Waymo aims to achieve another important milestone: operating in a market known for its harsh winter conditions.
The addition of Minneapolis, along with Denver and Detroit, means Waymo is confident it is nearly ready to begin serving passengers in areas where self-driving cars must be prepared to withstand snowy and frigid forecasts.
“We are currently operating in sub-zero temperatures with frost and hail, but we are testing the system to survive more severe weather conditions,” Teicher said. “We will start with a small fleet and expand over time.”
This week, Amazon-owned Zoox began offering its driverless vehicles for rides to some customers in San Francisco. San Francisco will be the second market where Zoox will offer the free service, after launching in Las Vegas in September. The company plans to completely remove its passenger waiting list for flights to San Francisco in 2026.
Attention: Waymo starts offering paid robotaxis rides on highways
