Waymo self-driving automobiles with roof-mounted sensor arrays touring close to palm timber and trendy buildings alongside the Embarcadero, San Francisco, California, February 21, 2025.
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Waymo on Tuesday introduced it’s increasing its service to incorporate one other 27 sq. miles of protection across the San Francisco Bay Space.
With the enlargement, Waymo will now take passengers round Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto and components of Sunnyvale, California. The Alphabet-owned firm opened its robotaxi service to most people in San Francisco in June.
Waymo will initially restrict the provision of its Silicon Valley service to customers of the Waymo One app who’re residents with ZIP codes within the space, the corporate stated. Waymo plans to serve extra riders throughout the area over time. The fleet of autos that will probably be in use within the new protection areas are totally electrical Jaguar I-Tempo autos with Waymo’s fifth technology of self-driving sensors, software program and different know-how.
“Opening our totally autonomous ride-hailing service in Silicon Valley marks a particular milestone in our Bay Space journey,” Waymo product chief Saswat Panigrahi stated in an announcement. “That is the place Waymo started and the place we’re headquartered.”
Waymo expanded its San Francisco Bay Space robotaxi service final summer season into Daly Metropolis, Broadmoor and Colma. Its robotaxis don’t but carry passengers to San Francisco Worldwide Airport.
A spokesperson instructed CNBC that Waymo is in “energetic discussions with SFO,” and added that the corporate is “working to attach” Silicon Valley and San Francisco to “present seamless autonomous rides throughout extra of the Bay Space sooner or later.”
Waymo additionally just lately launched a business robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, simply in time for town’s annual South by Southwest competition.
Whereas would-be opponents together with Elon Musk’s automaker Tesla, and Amazon-owned Zoox, are persevering with their very own robotaxi testing and improvement, Waymo has pulled far forward of self-driving firms within the U.S.
Earlier than Tuesday’s enlargement, Waymo stated it was serving greater than 200,000 paid journeys per week throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Alphabet does not disclose monetary outcomes for the autonomous car enterprise, however Waymo is a part of its “Different Bets.” That enterprise unit generated $400 million within the fourth quarter of 2024 and incurred working losses of $1.17 billion, in line with the corporate’s most up-to-date monetary submitting.
