Waymo keeps widening its driverless footprint, adding the Nashville Zoo, Green Hills and Lipscomb University to its Tennessee service area while readying a Cincinnati launch that has local experts already fretting about safety. In Orlando, the expansion arrived with a viral clip of a Waymo frozen near Universal Studios — a fitting mascot for a rollout that's outpacing public trust.
Waymo added airport runs in Nashville and Las Vegas's booming Harry Reid International, even as it keeps Philadelphia waiting more than a year without a launch date. The rollout's rougher edges surfaced in Tampa, where University of Tampa students described a ride gone wrong, and in Elon Musk's public jab calling Waymo vehicles 'pet destroyers' as the robotaxi rivalry with Tesla sharpens. Together the stories sketch a company sprinting into new cities while safety questions and cautious timelines trail behind it.
Waymo's robotaxis have quietly piled up substantial testing miles in Philadelphia, a sign the company is pushing its self-driving program well beyond its usual Sun Belt strongholds. Meanwhile, Waymo joins Uber and Lyft in snapping up depots, parking lots, and service centers nationwide — the unglamorous real estate infrastructure needed to keep a robotaxi fleet fed, charged, and cleaned as the industry scales up.
Nevada regulators cleared the way for Tesla, Uber, and Waymo to run thousands of robotaxis statewide, intensifying a three-way scramble for autonomous-ride supremacy. Meanwhile Waymo pressed its advantage on the ground, flipping the switch on full robotaxi service in Houston — its first complete rollout in a major Texas city. Together the moves show Waymo racing to lock in both regulatory runway and real-world mileage before rivals catch up.
Waymo notched two expansion wins in one day. California regulators cleared the company to extend driverless robotaxi service beyond San Francisco into the Bay Area and Los Angeles, while in Nevada, Waymo struck its first-ever sports venue partnership with the Las Vegas Raiders to offer autonomous rides at Allegiant Stadium. Together the moves signal Waymo's push to normalize robotaxis as everyday infrastructure, from commuter routes to game day.
Waymo keeps filling in the blanks on its robotaxi map: the company is rolling into Gilbert and Mesa, Arizona, though it says the West Valley isn't next in line, while in California it has secured regulatory approval to begin driverless rides in Sacramento. Together the moves push the service well beyond its original San Francisco and Los Angeles strongholds into a patchwork of new suburbs and state capitals.
Waymo has begun fully driverless operations in Denver, and the city is already sorting out how to police a car with no one behind the wheel. One robotaxi got tripped up navigating active construction on Colfax Avenue, a reminder that Denver's chaotic street work is a tougher test than Waymo's home turf in Phoenix or San Francisco.
Boston Dynamics named Rohit Prasad, the Amazon executive who built Alexa, as its new CEO, signaling a shift toward merging robotics with large-scale AI systems. The move comes alongside a parallel bet from parent company Hyundai, which is investing with Boston Dynamics in AI-powered training systems meant to get robots onto manufacturing lines faster.