Waymo has expanded its robotaxi business to its fourth city: Austin, Texas. For the first time, the Alphabet subsidiary is relying on Uber to handle ride-booking through its app and provide maintenance services for its electric vehicles.
The autonomous taxi service will initially operate in a 37-square mile section of the city that it expects to have the highest demand, said Nicole Gavel, Waymo’s head of business development and strategic partnerships. Unlike its operations in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. where Waymo has its own service depots, Uber will operate one in Austin to keep the EVs charged up and in good working order, she told Forbes.
In Austin, “riders can get access via the Uber ridehail network exclusively. That’s the first unique aspect,” she told Forbes. “Secondly, Uber is responsible for the fleet operations. That includes charging infrastructure, infrastructure operations at the depot, maintaining vehicles from a service perspective, tire maintenance, all of that good stuff.”
She declined to provide details of the revenue-sharing arrangement Waymo has with Uber in Austin. The companies plan to have a similar arrangement in Atlanta when Waymo launches commercial operations there later this year.
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Waymo last month said it’s providing more than 200,000 paid rides a week in the three cities it was serving before the Austin launch, which is double the volume it was doing in Aug. 2024. It booked more than 4 million rides in 2024. The company so far has declined to share revenue details from the service, which Forbes has estimated at about $100 million last year.
The Austin launch comes months ahead of Elon Musk’s promise to offer an autonomous Tesla ride service in the city starting in June. Though Tesla vehicles have had the company’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving software for years, despite the names, they lack the autonomous driving capability of Waymo’s system. To date, Waymo hasn’t had a fatal accident involving its vehicles operating in autonomous mode. But there are at least 52 known fatalities that have occurred involving Teslas when Autopilot or FSD were engaged through 2024, according to a website tracking such accidents.
Waymo currently has about 700 robotaxis in use in all four cities, versions of Jaguar’s I-Pace electric SUV modified with dozens of sensors including laser lidar, radar and cameras and a high-powered computing system. Musk’s plan for Tesla robotaxis is to use only cameras as a cost-saving measure, an approach most autonomous vehicle experts consider unwise.
In addition to adding service in Austin today and Atlanta later in the year, Waymo plans to expand to Miami in 2026. This year it also plans to add Zeekr electric vans to its fleet and begin testing modified Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric hatchbacks, both equipped with a lower-cost, next-generation version of its sensors and computing system.
