Waymo continues robotaxi ramp up with Miami service now open to public

Waymo robotaxis can now be hailed by the public in Miami.

The company said Thursday it will initially open the service, on a rolling basis, to the nearly 10,000 local residents on its waitlist. Once accepted, riders will be able to hail a robotaxi within a 60-square-mile service area in Miami that covers neighborhoods such as the Design District, Wynwood, Brickell, and Coral Gables.

Waymo said it plans to eventually expand to Miami International Airport, but didn’t provide a timeline beyond that it was coming “soon.”

Waymo has had a presence in Miami for months in the lead-up to the commercial launch. After mapping and then testing its autonomous vehicles on Miami’s public roads, the company removed safety operators from the fleet in November. The driverless service was initially open to employees.

This phased approach is part of Waymo’s launch playbook, and one that is being implemented far more often than even a year ago. Waymo first opened its robotaxis to the general public in Phoenix in 2020. It expanded to San Francisco and Los Angeles and eventually opened it to all riders in 2024. As the company continued to expand in those metro areas — pushing into the larger Bay Area and into Silicon Valley, for example — it also opened in new markets.

Waymo opened a robotaxi service in spring 2025 in partnership with Uber in Atlanta and Austin, and expanded its service area in existing markets to include freeways.

Waymo has laid out an aggressive plan to bring its robotaxi service to nearly a dozen more cities over the next year. Those plans include Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Nashville, London, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The company has already started testing in some of those cities using a mix of its all-electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles and newer Zeekr RT vans that have been rebranded “Ojai.”

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said during an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt last October that “by the end of 2026, you should expect us to be offering 1 million trips per week.”

The expansion hasn’t been without problems. Residents in cities like San Francisco have captured video of Waymo vehicles creating traffic jams, notably during a widespread power outage in December.

It has also gotten the attention of federal safety regulators.

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened an initial investigation into the company last October over how its robotaxis operated around a stopped school bus in Atlanta. School district officials in Austin have shared video and complaints around the same issue of Waymo moving past school buses even when the lights are on and the stop sign is deployed.

The company has issued a voluntary software recall to fix that issue. However, new videos, which show Waymos illegally passing school buses, suggest the problem has not been resolved.

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