Waymo just made its biggest geographic expansion yet, launching autonomous vehicle testing in Philadelphia while beginning data collection in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. The Google-owned robotaxi company now operates in over 20 cities as it races toward its goal of one million weekly rides by 2026, though recent safety incidents continue shadowing the rollout.
Waymo is making its most aggressive expansion move yet, dropping autonomous vehicles into four major American cities as the robotaxi race hits overdrive. The Alphabet-owned company announced Wednesday it's begun testing self-driving vehicles with safety monitors in Philadelphia, while crews have started manual driving operations to collect mapping data in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.
The timing couldn't be more strategic. While competitors like Tesla promise eventual robotaxi networks and startups scramble for funding, Waymo is methodically building real infrastructure. The company now operates in over 20 cities, with full commercial service running in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles - including freeway driving that most autonomous vehicle companies haven't mastered.
"We're not just testing anymore, we're scaling," signals this latest expansion. Waymo has set an ambitious target of one million rides per week by the end of 2026, a benchmark that would cement its position as the dominant robotaxi operator in America. The company's partnership strategy with Uber in cities like Atlanta and Austin shows how it's leveraging existing ride-hailing infrastructure rather than building from scratch.
But this rapid expansion comes with growing pains that regulators are watching closely. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how Waymo vehicles operate near school buses after a vehicle was filmed driving around a stopped bus in Atlanta in September. More troubling, Austin news outlet KXAN published a report this week showing Waymo vehicles have illegally passed school buses loading or unloading children multiple times - even after the company claimed to have fixed the issue with software updates.
The safety incidents create an uncomfortable contrast with recent claims of being based on company data. While those statistics sound impressive, the real-world footage of vehicles endangering children tells a different story about the challenges of scaling autonomous systems across diverse urban environments.
