Waymo Drives Into Four New Cities
Waymo is expanding again. The Alphabet-owned company has started autonomous testing in Philadelphia with a safety driver behind the wheel. At the same time, it will begin manual data collection in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh to prep for future deployment.
There’s no official timeline for full service launches in those cities yet. Waymo also hasn’t announced if it will partner with local operators like Uber, as it has done in cities such as Atlanta and Austin.
Still, the move brings Waymo’s active footprint to over 20 U.S. cities—including commercial operations, public rides, and behind-the-scenes testing.
One Million Rides per Week?
Waymo is now running autonomous rides on freeways in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. It has ambitious plans to hit one million rides per week by the end of 2026.
The company continues to emphasize safety as its top priority. Waymo recently released internal data claiming its autonomous system operates at a level five times safer than a human driver.
Not Without Controversy
Despite the progress, Waymo is facing serious questions from regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation into how the vehicles behave around school buses.
In one viral incident, a Waymo car was filmed driving around a stopped school bus in Atlanta. This week, Austin-based outlet KXAN reported multiple similar incidents — including after Waymo said it had shipped software updates to fix the issue.
What It All Means
Waymo’s robotaxi rollout is accelerating fast — with more cities, more data, and a bold roadmap for 2026.
But the school bus incidents highlight how fragile trust can be in autonomous tech.
Expansion is easy to announce. Proving safety at scale is the real challenge. Regulatory scrutiny is only expected to increase as robotaxis hit more public roads.
For Waymo, maintaining public confidence may be just as important as advancing the tech itself.
