In the race to transport people in self-driving taxis, Alphabet’s subsidiary Waymo has emerged as the clear frontrunner.
On Tuesday the company announced that its customers were taking more than 100,000 paid rides weekly—double the number from just a few months ago in May. It’s a signal that Waymo is extending its lead over its robo-taxi competitors and that its ride-hailing business could become a meaningful revenue stream for Google’s parent company.
Waymo’s boost in ridership comes as it ramps up service this year—fully launching commercial rides in San Francisco and starting gradual service in Los Angeles all in the last few months. Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, who leads the company alongside fellow co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov, said in March that it had started testing self-driving rides in Austin and plans to start full service in that market later this year.
As Waymo has entered new cities, its competitors have fallen further behind. General Motors–owned Cruise, which had launched commercial service in San Francisco in 2022, pulled its fleet off the streets after its handling of an accident last fall. While Cruise resumed supervised autonomous driving in some markets in May, it's still using human safety drivers. Amazon-owned Zoox, another robotaxi competitor, has yet to launch passenger service, though employees are taking rides in Las Vegas and Foster City, Calif. China-based startup WeRide, which drove more than 40,000 miles in California last year, just received its California permit to test its vehicles with passengers last week.
Of course, Waymo, which just released new details about its upcoming sensor system for its vehicle yesterday, has had its own hiccups, too—most recently with locals in the Bay Area. Over the last week, neighbors of a Waymo parking lot complained that its cars were honking overnight.
