Waymo said on Tuesday that it now gives more than 100,000 paid robotaxi rides each week in its three main business markets: Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
The co-CEO of Waymo, Tekedra Mawakana, shared those numbers in a post on X. The new number of 100,000 is twice what the company said before. Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company’s earnings call this summer that Waymo was providing more than 50,000 paid rides per week. Waymo also wrote in a June blog post that the number was higher.
Waymo has reached that goal with a fleet of hundreds of electric Jaguar I-Pace cars that can drive themselves. The company doesn’t give out exact fleet numbers, but the California Department of Revenue found out through the Freedom of Information Act that the company has 778 robotaxis in the state that are allowed to be used under its distribution permit. It’s not clear if some of those cars are actually in Phoenix.
Waymo has been in Phoenix for a long time and is still here to stay. But its biggest growth has been in California, where it got the last few permits it needed to start a business robotaxi service last August.
Since then, Waymo has expanded its service to all of San Francisco 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is also still expanding into new parts of Los Angeles, which is a very large city. Waymo has recently started testing its fully autonomous vehicles on motorways in the area, without a human safety driver. The company has also recently expanded its service to other places on the San Francisco Peninsula, including Daly City. The company is also working harder to get pickup and drop-offs at San Francisco International Airport, but getting permission will take a long time.
The business is also in Austin, but they haven’t started charging for rides without a driver there yet.
The commercial growth is making money, but Waymo has never said how much. However, it comes with rising costs. Betabet, the parent company, said in June that it would spend an extra $5 billion over the next few years on its self-driving division.
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