Waymo has activated fully driverless operations in Las Vegas, its riders will now see vehicles with no human at the wheel, and the Alphabet unit says Denver, San Diego, and Tampa are next in line.
The move adds four new markets to Waymo’s driverless footprint and pushes the company deeper into its target of 1 million paid rides per week by the end of 2026.
Four new cities, no safety driver
Waymo announced the expansion on Tuesday, confirming that Las Vegas vehicles are running “with no human at the wheel” starting today, with Denver, San Diego, and Tampa “to follow.” The company is directing interested riders to download the Waymo app to be notified when service opens in their city.
The distinction matters. Waymo has been testing in several of these markets with human safety operators behind the wheel for months. Flipping to fully driverless, what Waymo calls “autonomous mode activated”, is the milestone that turns a test program into a commercial robotaxi service.
Waymo now operates a fleet of roughly 3,500 robotaxis and has surpassed 20 million trips. It was providing around 500,000 paid rides per week across its existing markets earlier this year, which include Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.
Scaling toward 1 million weekly rides
The Las Vegas launch is the latest step in an aggressive 2026 rollout. Waymo raised a $16 billion round at a $126 billion valuation earlier this year — the largest investment ever in an autonomous vehicle company — specifically to fund this kind of city-by-city expansion.
In May, the company expanded its total service area past 1,400 square miles across 11 US cities, more territory than the entire state of Rhode Island. It is also rolling out its purpose-built Ojai robotaxi with 6th-generation Driver hardware, the first vehicle Waymo designed from the ground up rather than retrofitting a consumer car.
Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana has framed 1 million weekly rides as an “inflection point” for the business. Waymo has said it plans to reach that number by the end of 2026, with international service in London and then Tokyo to follow.
Tampa is a notable addition to the list. Waymo’s previously disclosed 2026 expansion targets included Washington, Detroit, Las Vegas, San Diego, Denver, and Orlando, but Tampa gives the company a second Florida market and further concentrates its growth in the Sun Belt.
The competitive gap with Tesla
Waymo’s driverless expansion stands in sharp contrast to the state of its closest US robotaxi rival. Tesla launched its “Robotaxi” service in Austin in June 2025 and has since expanded to Dallas, Houston, and Miami, but the fleet remains tiny — roughly 20 driverless vehicles covering about 245 square miles of the Austin metro, according to third-party tracking data.
Tesla removed its in-car safety monitors around the one-year mark, but its vehicles still rely on remote operators who can take control at low speed to reposition a stuck car. We tracked the slow ramp as Tesla expanded its Austin service area with only a handful of cars.
Tesla has tied any major fleet ramp to the release of Full Self-Driving v15, which it has targeted for late 2026 or early 2027. Waymo, meanwhile, is adding entire cities to its driverless network on a near-monthly basis.
Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
