Waymo expands robotaxi service to 3 more U.S. cities as Zoox and Tesla race to catch up

Waymo is widening the gap with its robotaxi rivals.

Alphabet’s autonomous driving company is launching driverless rides for customers in San Diego, Tampa, and Denver, bringing commercial operations to Colorado for the first time. The move comes as Amazon-owned Zoox prepares to test in two more cities and Tesla gets ready to reveal new details about its Cybercab and Robotaxi service on Thursday.

The distinction between those moves tells much of the story. Waymo is opening commercial driverless service in new markets. Zoox is sending vehicles into Houston and San Diego with human drivers aboard. Tesla is betting its camera-heavy approach can eventually compete at much greater scale.

According to CNBC, Waymo now has more than 4,000 vehicles operating across 14 U.S. cities and provides more than 500,000 robotaxi rides each week. The company wants to cross 1 million weekly rides by the end of 2026.

In San Diego, Tampa, and Denver, Waymo expects to start with dozens of robotaxis before growing to “hundreds over time,” a company spokesperson said. Riders will book directly through the Waymo app.

“Waymo, which has a commanding market lead in the U.S., said it’s now offering driverless rides to customers in San Diego, Tampa, Florida, and Denver, the first time the company will have commercial operations in Colorado. Zoox, meanwhile, said it will begin testing its toaster-shaped vehicles in Houston and San Diego with human drivers on board,” CNBC reported.

The fleet includes Waymo’s newer Ojai vehicles built on Zeekr’s minivan-style platform. The vehicles feature automatic sliding doors, three large interior screens and Waymo’s sixth-generation autonomous driving system. Gemini is integrated into the entertainment system.

Waymo already works with Uber in some markets, giving the company another distribution channel beyond its own app.

Waymo’s lead is becoming harder to ignore

Zoox plans to begin testing its distinctive purpose-built vehicles in Houston and San Diego, giving the Amazon subsidiary a presence in 12 U.S. markets. Its commercial footprint remains much smaller.

Las Vegas is currently the only city where Zoox operates a paid ride-hailing service. The company offers free rides to selected passengers in San Francisco but has yet to say when paid service will begin there.

Zoox

Meanwhile, Tesla presents a different kind of threat.

Elon Musk’s company is expected to provide fresh details Thursday about its Cybercab and Robotaxi ride-hailing plans. Tesla is betting that autonomy can be achieved primarily through cameras and increasingly capable neural networks, a strategy that could lower hardware costs and make robotaxis cheaper to manufacture at scale.

Waymo thinks that bet leaves too little room for failure.

Late last month, Waymo publicly challenged Tesla’s vision-first approach, citing more than 200 million fully autonomous miles and arguing that Level 4 autonomy requires redundant perception from cameras, lidar and radar.

That disagreement is moving beyond an engineering debate. It could become a regulatory fight.

A proposed framework in New Jersey, for example, would require robotaxis to use multiple sensor types. Rules built around that philosophy could favor Waymo’s architecture and create problems for systems relying primarily on cameras.

The two companies are making fundamentally different bets about physical AI. Tesla believes better models, huge datasets, and cheaper hardware can make autonomous driving scalable. Waymo believes machines entrusted with human lives need independent sensing systems that can back each other up when one fails.

The robotaxi race is becoming a real business

There is plenty at stake. Goldman Sachs Research forecasts that the U.S. robotaxi market could grow from roughly $3 billion next year to $19 billion by 2030 and $48 billion by 2035.

Waymo has moved beyond proving that autonomous taxis can operate. Its next test is whether they can become a mainstream transportation network across dozens of cities without safety problems undermining public confidence.

That challenge remains unresolved. Autonomous vehicles have struggled during bad weather, construction, unusual traffic patterns and blackouts. Some incidents have blocked roads or required first responders to move vehicles by hand. Labor groups are raising another concern: what happens to transportation jobs if driverless fleets reach mass adoption?

Safety advocates are pressing operators for more consistent disclosure of mileage, crashes, and other performance data.

Those questions will grow harder to ignore as fleets get bigger.

For now, the robotaxi race has an unmistakable leader. Waymo already carries hundreds of thousands of passengers every week and is expanding into commercial markets. Zoox is widening its testing footprint. Tesla is preparing its next move.

The competition is no longer about building an impressive autonomous vehicle demonstration. It is about who can turn driverless cars into a transportation business that works city after city, ride after ride.