Waymo Robotaxi Expansion Hits Denver, San Diego and Tampa

Three cities in one day

On September 1, 2026, Waymo began taking paying riders in fully driverless cars in Denver, San Diego and Tampa. It was the company's biggest single-day expansion so far.1113 Waymo had first named these markets, along with Las Vegas, on July 8. Each city then went through a phase where only employees could ride before the public was let in.1216 Las Vegas followed on September 14 after Nevada regulators granted a permit, so all four markets from the July announcement are now open.314

None of the launches opened to everyone at once. Riders in all three cities join a waitlist in the Waymo app and get access in waves, the same approach the company has used elsewhere.1217 Each city started with a few dozen vehicles. Denver and San Diego use only the sixth-generation Ojai, a vehicle built by Zeekr. Tampa runs a mix of Ojai and older Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.11

Reports differ slightly on how big the service areas are. One account puts Denver at about 60 square miles. A tracker that follows the rollout says about 50 at launch and notes that the larger figure came from later local reporting.1317 For San Diego, estimates run from about 40 square miles to about 50, with service stretching from Pacific Beach and Point Loma down to downtown and Barrio Logan. There are no freeway or airport trips yet.1317 Tampa covers close to 50 square miles, from Westshore to East Tampa, including Hyde Park and Ybor City. The University of South Florida and Temple Terrace are not yet included.1213 The likely explanation is that the boundaries changed after launch rather than that anyone got the numbers wrong. Waymo usually starts small and widens its zones over time.17

What the numbers show

Counts of Waymo's markets vary. Some reports said 14 cities when the September 1 launches happened, and most now say 15 after Las Vegas.155 Either way, the growth is fast. In September 2024 Waymo served three cities: Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco.18 Paid trips went from about 50,000 a week in May 2024 to more than 500,000 a week this year.19 Most reports put the fleet at more than 4,000 vehicles, though an earlier figure from March 2026 was closer to 3,000. That gap suggests the fleet grew a lot during the spring.115

The money behind this growth is now clearer. In February Waymo raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation, and Alphabet put in most of it.1 In October it closed a $5 billion loan, its first debt financing, from a group of lenders led by PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street.516 Waymo called the loan part of its shift into a "scaling commercial enterprise."5 Its stated goal is 1 million paid rides a week across 20 cities by the end of 2026.16

That goal is harder than it sounds. One financial analysis noted that Waymo has not released a much higher weekly ride count since the spring. That makes it hard to tell how much the new cities are adding, and hitting the target would mean roughly doubling volume in a few months.16 Our reading is that the September launches are about building a footprint more than adding riders right away. Cities that start with dozens of cars and invite riders in batches cannot produce hundreds of thousands of weekly trips by December. The loan is meant to pay for the cars, depots and operations that will turn these markets into real volume later.

Competitors and the federal picture

Waymo is not alone in Tampa. Tesla's Robotaxi service has offered rides there without a safety monitor since July 21, alongside cars that still carry one.1117 That makes Tampa one of the few places where riders can compare the two companies' approaches directly. In San Diego, Amazon's Zoox announced testing on the same day Waymo opened to the public.317 Three days after Waymo's launches, Tesla put its Cybercab, which has no steering wheel, onto Austin streets. Federal regulators quickly opened a review of how that vehicle was certified, and the review was later escalated to a Special Order.1511

At the federal level, things are moving but nothing has been settled. In July, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to speed up work on the first national performance standards for autonomous vehicles. The goal is to update federal safety rules so that individual exemptions eventually become unnecessary.3 The SELF DRIVE Act, introduced in February, cleared a subcommittee by a 12–11 vote but has not become law.3 Waymo told a Senate committee in February that the U.S. needs uniform national standards and warned that Chinese companies could otherwise win the global market.1 It spent $2 million on lobbying in the first half of 2026.1

Federal regulators are also looking hard at how robotaxis behave when things go wrong. NHTSA set a July 31 deadline for operators to submit plans for how their vehicles respond around first responders. No submissions have been made public and no result has been announced.3 That push followed incidents including a July 4 event in San Francisco, when several Waymo vehicles got stuck in heavy traffic and needed help to clear.3 On safety more broadly, a July study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that Waymo vehicles were involved in crashes 68% less often than human drivers in comparable areas.12 The researchers added a caveat: current data collection is not good enough to monitor a large-scale expansion continuously.3

Cities want a say they mostly don't have

The most important regulatory issue raised by these launches is local, not federal. In California, the state Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) decides where robotaxis can operate, and cities have little power to block or shape the service.7 San Diego shows the conflict clearly. The state allowed the September 1 launch without the city having any say. Two weeks later, the city council voted 8–0 to ask for local control over autonomous vehicles.4 The council added amendments about empty cars on the streets, pickups in bike lanes and crosswalks, how vehicles stop safely during power outages or cyberattacks, and disability access.4 Councilmember Marni von Wilpert pointed to emergency response, and colleagues raised the airport as one of the last reliable places for taxi drivers to earn a living.4 Waymo's policy representative called the resolution "extraordinarily premature." He cited the company's figure of a 94% reduction in crashes causing serious injury and said more than 100,000 San Diegans are on the waitlist.4 The resolution follows earlier opposition from the region's transit board, which voted in January against Waymo's expansion.1

The same fight is happening in cities on Waymo's "Up Next" list. In Minneapolis, where Waymo has been testing for close to a year, the council passed a measure requiring a paid human monitor in the driver's seat. Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed it, and an override vote was scheduled.81 Waymo called the proposal "a de facto ban."2 Minnesota has no specific law on autonomous vehicles, and officials disagree about what that means. Some council members think the lack of rules allows driverless cars. A state senator writing legislation argues that driving laws require a licensed human, so the cars are effectively prohibited.6 St. Paul is taking a slower route and has asked its planning commission to study possible guardrails.8 Portland's transportation bureau has proposed fleet caps, a requirement to drive 50,000 local miles before charging fares, rules on blocking bike lanes, and a fee to help rideshare drivers who lose work.9

Why the Sun Belt came first

Where Waymo has launched lines up closely with how friendly state law is. Analysts who track the rollout point to permissive state rules, mild weather and dense demand for trips as the common factors. They argue that state law comes first every time.17 Denver, Tampa and Las Vegas all fit that pattern. San Diego fits too, because California's state-level permits apply there whatever the city council thinks.14

Public acceptance is a separate question. University of South Florida students interviewed after the Tampa launch raised concerns about pedestrian safety, mapping mistakes and lost driving jobs, and several said they had no plans to ride.12 That skepticism matters more than it might seem. The legal routes Waymo has relied on, state permits that override local objections, are now driving cities to push back. Places where Waymo wants to go next, like Minneapolis and Portland, are writing rules before service starts instead of after.

Waymo's September launches show that it can now open several cities at once and has the money to keep going. The open question is whether the patchwork of local rules forming around it will shrink its next round of launches more than its funding can expand them.