Waymo Expands Self-Driving Taxi Service Around San Francisco, Los Angeles

Waymo is expanding its autonomous ride-hailing service into the San Francisco Peninsula, as well as more parts of Los Angeles, the company said Tuesday. It’s adding 10 square miles around San Francisco and 16 square miles around LA. 

Riders in Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma can start hailing rides through Waymo starting Tuesday, and riders in Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, Playa Vista and more areas of Hollywood, Chinatown and Westwood will have access starting Wednesday. 

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been operating in San Francisco since 2009 and rolled out fully autonomous rides in the area in late 2022. In June, it removed the San Francisco waitlist so anyone could hitch a ride through the Waymo One app 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The service is also available to all public riders in metro Phoenix and to select members of the public in Los Angeles. Waymo is currently conducting testing in Austin and aims to open up to riders later this year. 

See also: Waymo Opens Driverless Rides to Anyone in San Francisco, No Wait List Needed

The company says it carries out over 50,000 paid trips every week across San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix using the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. The cost of a ride (and wait time) varies based on time and location, but in my experience, prices are comparable to Uber or Lyft. Waymo is also testing autonomous rides on freeways in the area. An exclusive video shared with CNET in May shows the company’s vehicles navigating on- and off-ramps and changing lanes without a driver behind the wheel. 

Watch this: Testing Waymo’s Safe Exit Feature in a Self-Driving Taxi

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Waymo’s expansion hasn’t been without hiccups. The company landed in hot water after some of its vehicles were involved in a series of high-profile collisions earlier this year, including one with a biker in San Francisco and another with a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (It recalled and updated its software to address the issue.) The company has maintained its autonomous Waymo Driver “was up to 3.5x better in avoiding crashes that cause injuries and 2x better in avoiding police-reported crashes than human drivers in SF and Phoenix.” 

Competitor Cruise was suspended indefinitely in California last year after one of its driverless cars hit a jaywalking pedestrian. In June, the GM-owned company resumed operating manual and supervised rides in Dallas and Houston, as part of an effort to “validate our self-driving technology against our rigorous safety and performance standards,” the company said in a post on X. It added that it plans to start with human-driven vehicles before pivoting to “supervised autonomous driving with a safety driver behind the wheel.”