Scaling Waymo One safely across four cities this year

Later this year, Waymo One will be offering rides to the public in four major cities. 

Starting tomorrow, March 14, our fully autonomous ride-hailing service will be available to select members of the public in Los Angeles. And after starting initial rider-only testing in Austin last week, we plan to offer Waymo One to Austinites later this year.

This exciting news was shared by Waymo co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, during a featured session at SXSW today in Austin, Texas.

“Once an unimaginable future, autonomous driving is now a real-world way of getting around for tens of thousands of people each week,” said Mawakana. “After achieving key milestones in each city, we're so excited to bring the safety, comfort and delight of our Waymo One service to more people in Los Angeles and Austin this year.”

Los Angeles

In LA, we’ll begin by offering rides in a 63 square mile area from Santa Monica to Downtown LA, scaling our operations over time. These initial rides will be free, and with the California Public Utilities Commission’s recent approval, we will transition to paid service in the coming weeks. We’ll permanently welcome riders into our service, gradually onboarding the more than 50,000 people on our LA waitlist and continuing to hand out temporary codes at local events throughout the city.

We’ve put the Waymo Driver through over a year of careful, deliberate evaluation in Los Angeles since we first announced it as our third ride-hailing city. Last October, we invited a broad cross section of Angelenos to experience the Driver for themselves during our Waymo One Tour. Angelenos have taken over 15,000 fully autonomous rides with the Waymo Driver over the past five months, across Santa Monica, Century City, WeHo, Mid City, K-Town and Downtown LA.

The thousands of Angelenos who rode with us during the tour quickly integrated Waymo into their daily lives to shop, run errands and enjoy recreation and entertainment. With an average trip rating of 4.7 / 5 stars, they enjoyed the journey no matter the destination.

Austin

In Austin, we are currently testing fully autonomous rides across 43 square miles of the city, encompassing the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and more. At this stage of testing, we’re providing rides to Waymo employees before opening Waymo One to members of the public later this year.

Since we announced Austin as our fourth ride-hail city last year, we’ve been reacquainting ourselves with the city where we made history by giving the first member of the public a ride in a fully autonomous vehicle on public streets.

Our next steps are consistent with how we’ve built our service in other cities, focusing on community partnerships, engagement with policymakers and first responders and incremental expansion supported by our rigorous safety standards. Waymo vehicles have now driven over 10 million miles without a human driver behind the wheel and billions more in simulation — an unprecedented dataset of safe driving experience that has helped generalize the Waymo Driver’s capabilities to Los Angeles and Austin.

We’re excited for more people to experience the many benefits of fully autonomous driving. If you’re in LA or Austin and want to come along for the ride, please join our waitlist today.