Waymo Opens Robotaxi Service in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa, Bringing Its U.S. Footprint to 14 Cities

Waymo opened its robotaxi app to the public in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa on Tuesday, according to the company and confirmed by TechCrunch, Engadget, and Electrek. That brings Alphabet's self-driving unit to 14 U.S. cities, up from 11, and grows its active fleet to more than 4,000 vehicles, a mix of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs and a new Zeekr-built minivan called the Ojai.

Waymo says tens of thousands of people in each city had already signed up before the app went live, and it will let riders in gradually, starting with dozens of cars per market and scaling to hundreds over the coming months, per Mashable. Waymo chief marketing officer Suzanne Philion said in a company statement that the launch was about "making everyday transportation safer, easier, and more accessible."

Denver's snow problem

Every city Waymo has launched in so far sits in the West or South, with mild winters. Nashville was the coldest, averaging under 5 inches of snow a year, according to InsideEVs. Denver averages roughly 56 inches annually, per the National Weather Service, and Waymo's own announcement did not say whether its cars will keep running once real snow hits.

Waymo's safety blog says its vehicles are designed to pull over and stop if weather gets bad enough to threaten safe operation, the same way it already pauses service during heavy storms in Miami or dust storms in Arizona. The company has run snow testing in Novi, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York, but Denver marks the first time the driverless service will be sold to paying customers in a place that regularly gets buried. How the cars perform once winter actually arrives is untested at commercial scale.

Denver's initial coverage area runs roughly 60 square miles, from Washington Park to just south of Thornton and from Sloan's Lake to Central Park, according to the Denver Gazette. Denver International Airport isn't included yet, though Waymo says it plans to add airport service later. In Denver and San Diego, rides will run exclusively on the new Ojai minivan rather than the older Jaguar fleet.

Tampa becomes a two-company race

Tampa is the only city on the launch list where Waymo now competes directly with Tesla's paid robotaxi service. Tesla added Tampa and Orlando to its Robotaxi app in July, and the company also runs paid rides in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Miami using its Model Y and, eventually, its steering-wheel-free Cybercab.

The comparison isn't close on scale. Electrek pointed to Tesla's own second-quarter chart showing its robotaxi service growth flattening even as the company describes it as expanding, while Waymo is running fully driverless cars with no one in the driver's seat and tens of thousands already on its Tampa waitlist. Some reporting on Tesla's Austin rollout has described a human safety monitor riding in the front passenger seat rather than fully unsupervised operation, a distinction that matters when comparing the two companies' claims of "driverless" service.

The bigger expansion race

This launch is part of a run that started in March 2025, when Waymo opened Austin through a partnership with Uber. Since then it has added Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, and San Antonio, according to TechCrunch. Last month, the Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved a permit letting Waymo run up to 1,000 vehicles in Clark County, home to Las Vegas; Tesla and Uber received permits from the same agency. Waymo says it's targeting 1 million paid rides a week by the end of the year, per Electrek.

Internationally, Waymo is planning launches in London, Munich, and Tokyo, but Engadget reported that Waymo, along with Uber-backed Wayve and Baidu's partnership with Lyft, is unlikely to hit its goal of fully autonomous public rides in London this year because of technical and regulatory delays.

The safety claim, with a caveat

Waymo leaned on its safety record for the rollout, telling reporters its vehicles have been involved in 94% fewer serious-injury crashes than human drivers over the miles it has logged, a figure Electrek reported but also noted comes with context: Waymo's service mainly operates in lower-speed urban areas, not highways or the kind of icy mountain roads Colorado is known for. That's a fair point for skeptics to raise. A car that performs well navigating downtown San Diego traffic hasn't yet proven it can handle a Front Range snowstorm with paying customers in the back seat.

Waymo hasn't published a timeline for when or whether it will keep the Denver service running through a heavy winter storm, or whether it will simply suspend rides until roads clear, the way it already does for hurricanes in Florida. That's the open question heading into Colorado's first snowfall this fall.