Waymo Robotaxi Now Open To All In Los Angeles

Waymo, the robotaxi unit of Alphabet/Google, has announced that their Los Angeles service is now open to all riders, without a waitlist. Previously, they had a fairly long (up to 300,000 member) waitlist. The service area, about 80 square miles from downtown LA to Santa Monica, remains the same as before. Over its service areas, Waymo is doing 150,000 rides per week with nobody but the passengers in the vehicle.

Waymo also continues service in Phoenix and San Francisco, and has announced service will open later (via Uber) in Austin and Atlanta. Future service has not been announced, but testing has taken place in a variety of cities including New York, DC, Buffalo and others. In addition, Waymo has been granted a permit for the San Francisco Peninsula down to Sunnyvale (but not the airport as yet.) Test vehicles have been seen in Michigan, Florida, Washington State and other places. Places with snow will probably be deployed later than sunny areas.

Waymo will have only 100 vehicles in Los Angeles, so without a waitlist expect it to be somewhat busy. It is not yet going to any of the airports—only Phoenix has that highly popular destination.

Waymo also recently announced that it’s $5.6B funding round valued the company at $45 billion. That’s actually quite low compared to the potential value of the business, which is not simply a cheaper robotic Uber, but a threat to replace car ownership for a sizeable number of people.

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Is This Important?

It’s not an expansion of their service area, but opening up to all comers is an important milestone in the development of a robotaxi service. It means the service feels it is ready to handle high customer volume, and to let just anybody experience (and possibly report on social media) how rides went. It’s a step in moving from pilot projects to actual scaling. Of course, Waymo already did this in Phoenix and San Francisco, so it’s not quite the same leap. Steps taken by the companies show how internally confident they are, and I have used them to track progress on the Robotaxi Timeline.

Waymo will apparently continue Uber/TNC style pricing. Estimates suggest they try to be a little cheaper than Uber (particularly as there is no tipping possible) though pickup times and ride times are currently inferior, particularly because Waymo does not take the public on freeways, though it does allow that in its internal service for Alphabet employees.

Los Angeles is, of course, very much a car city, with low transit ridership and less taxi use than San Francisco, at least per capita. As such, it is in some ways a more challenging market for TNC style ride-hail service, though Chandler, AZ, their original city also was hardly a taxi-using city. It will be interesting to see how they respond to this environment now that the service is in full swing. LA is also greatly sprawled, and the service area, though large, is just a small part of greater LA.

The simple fact that more people will try the service is a big deal. Studies on public opinion on robotaxis indicate it changes incredibly when people actually ride in one. Those who have not ridden tend to have negative opinions, but riders have highly positive ones. Robotaxi providers certainly need that.

Waymo remains the undisputed leader, and really the only major operating player in the USA, though Cruise says it will return soon, and Zoox says it will deploy in 2025. The rest are in China. Tesla is still very, very far from having a robotaxi service, in spite of doing a big demo event in October.