Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving tech unit, expects to more than quadruple its ride service over the next year, aiming to handle at least a million paid robotaxi rides as it enters new cities in the U.S. and begins operating in the U.K. and Japan. It’s the first time that the company, which started in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car project, has set a hard target for its business.
Currently, the Mountain View, California-based company books more than 1 million rides a week in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Bay Area communities, Austin, Atlanta and, as of last month, Miami. That’s “a number that we’re on a path to hit every week by the end of 2026,” Waymo said in a blog post. “As we look to 2026, we’re laying the early groundwork for ride-hailing operations in over 20 additional cities in 2026, including international cities like Tokyo and London.”
Waymo doesn’t share financial data, but various estimates suggest it makes at least $20 per ride, which adds up to more than $20 million a month. At 1 million rides per week, its annualized revenue would hit about $1 billion, a milestone for the early-stage robotaxi market. To handle that volume of rides the company’s fleet will likely expand to at least 10,000 vehicles over the next year from more than 2,500 now, likely including electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 hatchbacks and Zeekr RT microvans in addition to its current Jaguar I-Pace SUVs.
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Though the service has proved popular with riders, Waymo’s rapid growth is also bringing new challenges. The company’s reputation for safety has been tarnished in San Francisco, for example, following the accidental killing in October of Kit Kat, a popular neighborhood cat that had crawled under one of its vehicles without being detected by sensors. Last month, a Waymo taxi killed a small dog in San Francisco that ran into the street. Both incidents have raised questions about whether the company, which hasn’t had serious accidents or fatalities involving humans, needs to make additional safety upgrades.
Additionally, Waymo last week announced a fleetwide recall to upgrade software after reports that its robotaxis in Texas failed to stop when encountering parked school buses.
“While we are incredibly proud of our strong safety record showing Waymo experiences 12 times fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians than human drivers, holding the highest safety standards means recognizing when our behavior should be better,” Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s Waymo’s chief safety officer, said in a statement.
That said, Waymo’s safety record has been better than that of competitors in the robotaxi space, including General Motors’ Cruise unit, which was shut down a year ago after one of its vehicles struck a pedestrian in San Francisco. Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk claims is a leader in autonomous driving, is dealing with ongoing legal issues related to its so-called Full Self-Driving feature and multiple accidents and fatalities linked to its use. Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it’s expanding an ongoing probe of FSD.
But while Waymo’s safety issues so far haven’t been as serious, some critics think it’s expanding too fast, perhaps ahead of a potential IPO of the unit.
“We are left to wonder why the `world’s most experienced driver’ still struggles to handle obviously foreseeable circumstances after 100 million miles of experience,” Phil Koopman, an autonomous driving researcher and Carnegie-Mellon University professor, said in a blog post. “Waymo has every incentive to continue their expansion juggernaut using this same playbook until they get their IPO or they suffer a mishap they can’t shrug off. It’s unclear which will happen first.”
