Starting today, don’t be surprised if you see fully autonomous driving – no safety driver aboard – in Miami.
Take that, Tesla.
Alphabet’s Waymo announced it has just begun its fully autonomous driving in the Magic City, and Orlando, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio also will be rolling without safety drivers within weeks. Waymo has been testing its electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles on Miami’s streets this year and says says it still plans to open the service to paid riders next year.
This news comes just one week after Tesla announced that Miami will be one its next five cities to get its robotaxi service, though Elon Musk did not give a specific timetable.
Waymo is clearly leading the pack in this Miami robotaxi challenge, already operating its service in Los Angeles (where its vehicles now also drive on the LA highways), San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta. In addition to Waymo, Robotaxi startup Argo AI and Amazon’s Zoox have also been testing services in Miami.
In its blog post on Tuesday, Waymo said: “We’ve built a generalizable Driver, powered by Waymo’s demonstrably safe AI, and an operational playbook to reliably achieve this milestone, and our safety- and community-first approach, enables us to bring it to riders faster than ever.”
As it enters a new city, Waymo says it compares driving performance against a proven baseline to validate the performance of the Waymo Driver and identify any unique local characteristics. They refine the Waymo Driver’s AI to navigate local nuances, but those are becoming fewer with every city, Waymo reports.
At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last month, co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana reported said: “By the end of 2026, you should expect us to be offering 1 million trips per week.”
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