Waymo Robotaxi Expansion Reaches Denver, San Diego and Tampa

Three cities open on the same day

On September 1, 2026, Waymo started giving fully driverless, paid rides to members of the public in Denver, San Diego and Tampa. The company admitted riders gradually from a waitlist, the same way it has opened its other markets.1512 Two weeks later, on September 14, Las Vegas opened as well. That gave Waymo public service in 15 U.S. metro areas and made Las Vegas its first public market in Nevada.15 Waymo had announced all four cities together on July 8.133

Each new market started with a fairly small footprint. In San Diego, the service covers about 50 square miles, from Logan Heights to Pacific Beach.14 Denver's zone is about 60 square miles and is served only by Waymo's Zeekr-built Ojai vehicle.14 Tampa's covers nearly 50 square miles, from Westshore to East Tampa and from Hyde Park to Temple Crest.14 The University of South Florida and Temple Terrace are not yet included in Tampa.13 One tracker reports that each city began with only dozens of vehicles. Denver and San Diego run Ojai only, while Tampa uses a mix of Ojai and older Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.15

The city counts differ between outlets, but the difference comes from timing. Coverage written just after the September 1 launches put Waymo at 14 cities.1713 Coverage written after the Las Vegas opening says 15.1516 At least one city guide says Tampa "launched" in July.11 That appears to treat the July announcement as the launch. Local reporting and Waymo's own announcement put public rides in Tampa on September 1, after a period when only employees could ride.1314 Driver-supervised testing in Tampa had started in December 2025.13

The numbers behind the push

These launches are part of a broader effort to scale up quickly. Paid weekly trips grew about tenfold, from 50,000 in May 2024 to more than 500,000 earlier this year. TechCrunch ties that growth mainly to opening one new market after another. In September 2024, Waymo operated in three cities.19 By late September 2026, its fleet was about 4,000 vehicles, with roughly 80% of them in California and Texas.4 The Texas fleet grew 49% in three weeks, reaching 1,102 registered vehicles as of September 24.4

The company is also borrowing to fund the expansion. Waymo has taken out a $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing, from lenders led by PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street.16 That follows a $16 billion equity round in February that valued the company at about $126 billion.16 Its stated goal is 1 million paid rides per week across 20 cities by the end of 2026.16

That goal is where the reporting gives the most reason for doubt. Waymo has not published a much higher weekly ride total since spring, which makes it hard to tell how much the new cities are adding.16 Hitting the target means roughly doubling the volume Sundar Pichai cited in April within about eight months.16 Markets that start with dozens of cars and open by invitation will not supply that growth on their own. Most of the near-term volume probably has to come from adding vehicles in Texas and California. MoffettNathanson, which tracks Ojai shipments, estimates that 5,100 of the vehicles will arrive in the U.S. by year-end.4 Those imports, and the tariffs Waymo pays on the Chinese-built minivan, matter more to the target than the city count.4

Safety claims, and their limits

Waymo has used safety data to argue for expanding faster. With the September launches, it repeated its claim that its vehicles are involved in 94% fewer crashes causing serious injury or worse than human drivers.17 Its policy staff used the same figure when speaking to the San Diego City Council.5 An independent study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, released in July, found a 68% lower crash-involvement rate than human drivers in comparable areas. That study covered only vehicles operating without a driver during the study period.13

The two figures measure different things, but both favor Waymo. The caveats still matter. IIHS is funded by the insurance industry. Waymo is the only operator that publicly reports the miles driven needed to calculate these rates, and it does so voluntarily. IIHS itself says current data collection is not good enough to monitor a large-scale expansion continuously.3 Put simply, the evidence is encouraging but it comes from small samples, and it says nothing about competing robotaxi services.

The company's operating record this year also includes problems. Waymo paused freeway rides in late May and started bringing them back on July 29, beginning in Phoenix.15 Service in San Antonio stopped after severe flooding in April. It resumed on September 17, after software changes to detect standing water and new limits on flood-prone areas.3 One tracker reports that rides at SFO, which began for a limited group in January, were paused in July with no confirmed restart.15

Regulators are split by level of government

The expansion shows how fragmented robotaxi oversight is. Generally, states decide whether these vehicles can operate. Federal regulators handle vehicle design standards and safety enforcement. Cities often have little control over either.

San Diego is the clearest example. The California Public Utilities Commission allowed Waymo to start service there on September 1 without the city having a say in how it operates.5 On September 14, the City Council voted 8–0 for a resolution asking for local control over autonomous vehicles. Council members added amendments on empty vehicles circulating on streets, safe stops during power outages or cyberattacks, pickups in bike lanes and crosswalks, and disability access.5 Waymo's representative called the resolution "extraordinarily premature" and said more than 100,000 San Diegans had joined the waitlist.5 Opposition in San Diego has been building for months. A council member objected in November 2025, and the region's transit board passed a resolution against expansion in January 2026.2 Bay Area officials face the same situation, because the CPUC's authority leaves counties and cities little room to permit or block the service.7

Other cities on Waymo's list are trying to write rules before the cars arrive. In Minneapolis, a proposed ordinance would require a paid human monitor in the driver's seat and a city operating license. A Waymo spokesperson called it "a de facto ban."1 The council later approved a requirement for human drivers, and Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed it.2 Minnesota has no specific autonomous vehicle law. One state senator argues that this gap means driverless cars cannot legally operate there at all.6 In Portland, city transportation staff have floated caps on fleet size, a requirement to log 50,000 local miles before charging fares, limits on blocking bike lanes, a requirement that remote operators be licensed in the U.S., and a fee to support rideshare drivers.10

Nevada offers a contrasting approach. On August 20, the state's Transportation Authority unanimously approved three operators for paid driverless service across Clark County: Tesla with up to 5,000 vehicles, Waymo with 1,000, and an Uber subsidiary with 1,000.3 The decision opened the market quickly but created a competitive problem for Waymo. A rival now has permission for a fleet five times larger in the same county.

At the federal level, a lot is proposed but little is settled. The SELF DRIVE Act cleared a House subcommittee by 12–11 in February and has not become law.3 NHTSA has proposed removing brake-pedal requirements for vehicles designed never to have a human driver, but has not issued a final rule.3 In July, NHTSA ordered developers to submit plans for fixing robotaxi interference at emergency scenes. The order was widely read as aimed at Waymo, and NHTSA has announced no outcome.3 Waymo has asked the Senate for uniform national standards, arguing that the U.S. could otherwise lose the market to Chinese competitors.2 Some coverage frames the industry's growth as a race to get vehicles on public roads before regulators catch up.17

The bottom line

In my view, Denver, San Diego and Tampa show that Waymo's process for opening a city is now routine. It maps the area, tests with safety drivers, gives rides to employees, then admits the public in stages. The difficult part of scaling is no longer the driving technology alone. The harder questions are financing, supply of vehicles under tariffs, and how much local resistance it meets. Opposition in San Diego is about jobs and emergency response, not about whether the cars work.5 Labor concerns also come up in Tampa, where students worry about rideshare drivers losing income.13

Waymo's state-by-state approach works where state permits override city objections, as in California, Texas, Florida and Nevada. It looks much weaker in places like Minneapolis and Portland, which are writing their own rules. Those are among the cities Waymo will need to reach its 20-city goal. Without a federal framework, the company's growth will depend on which states keep local governments from setting their own rules.