Waymo opens robotaxi service in Denver, San Diego and Tampa, reaching 14 US cities

Waymo opens three more cities

According to TechCrunch, Waymo has started offering robotaxi rides to the public in Denver, San Diego and Tampa, extending the Alphabet-owned company's paying operations to 14 US cities. The company announced the launches on Tuesday and said riders will be invited on a rolling basis, with access ramping up gradually — the same cautious rollout pattern it has used elsewhere.

The expansion has pushed Waymo's fleet past 4,000 vehicles, a mix of its self-driving Jaguar I-Pace hatchbacks and a newer minivan called the Ojai.

The Ojai takes the lead role

Waymo tends to repeat the same sequence in each new market: it maps and tests the area, withdraws the human safety operator, then opens the service to employees, journalists and other invited guests before the general public. How quickly paying riders get access often depends on local rules — TechCrunch notes that California, for instance, requires approvals from two separate agencies, one covering driverless deployment and another covering the right to charge for rides.

The three new launches follow that template with one notable exception: in Denver and San Diego, the Ojai will be the only autonomous vehicle riders can hail. The Ojai, pronounced "oh-hi," is a Zeekr-built minivan running Waymo's sixth-generation self-driving system and designed to be cheaper to build, operate and maintain than earlier hardware. The Ojai fleet is still small — roughly 300 vehicles against the larger I-Pace population — but TechCrunch reports it is expected to grow quickly as Waymo pursues profitability alongside scale.

An eighteen-month expansion sprint

TechCrunch frames the new launches as part of an aggressive push that began roughly 18 months ago and has cemented Waymo's position as the US robotaxi market leader. The company ran a service in Phoenix for years before August 2023, when it secured the permits needed to charge for fully driverless rides in San Francisco. It then broadened its Bay Area coverage — first to surface streets across the city, then to surrounding enclaves, and eventually to the freeways linking them — before entering Los Angeles in 2024.

The real turning point came in March 2025, when Waymo opened its robotaxis to riders in Austin through a partnership with Uber. Since then it has added seven more commercial markets: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, Orlando and San Antonio.

The momentum is continuing. Last month the Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved a permit allowing Waymo to operate up to 1,000 autonomous vehicles in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, over the next year — with Tesla and Uber also receiving permits from the same agency. Waymo's ambitions are not confined to the US either: it is planning robotaxi launches in London and Munich.

Tesla is closing the gap

The expansion comes as Tesla works to narrow Waymo's lead. TechCrunch reports that Tesla already charges for rides in driverless Model Y vehicles in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa — meaning the two companies now compete directly in at least one of Waymo's newest markets. Service in some Tesla markets remains limited, but the company keeps adding vehicles and expanding within those cities, and it is also counting on the Cybercab, a purpose-built two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals, to accelerate its efforts.

Why it matters

Waymo's move to 14 cities is the clearest signal yet that autonomous ride-hailing is shifting from pilot projects to a scaled commercial business. The Denver and San Diego launches double as the first real test of the Ojai as Waymo's frontline vehicle, and its cheaper sixth-generation hardware will determine whether the unit economics of robotaxis can actually work. The overlapping footprints with Tesla, particularly in Tampa, also set up the first sustained head-to-head competition between the two leading approaches to autonomy — purpose-built sensor suites versus camera-based systems — with regulators and riders watching the results.