You Can Catch A Waymo Driverless Taxi In Four More Cities Now

Waymo may be expanding, but it hasn't been able to do so without a fair few hiccups. The brand relies largely on testing in public environments, and the brand's taxis have found a few growing pains along the way. Namely, these pains are a result of the taxi's driverless nature. An American Automobile Association survey said that six in 10 drivers were afraid of driverless cars.

Waymo has earned that reputation in some ways, with inevitable crashes. The brand does employ human chaperones for some of its vehicles, especially in new cities where it is testing its systems ahead of a planned expansion. Currently in Denver, Waymo's Ojai taxis are seen frequently on the street, but all have a human operator behind the wheel to help take over in the event of an accident or when the car gets stuck. Sometimes, that may be as a result of human intervention. San Franciscans took to placing traffic cones on the LiDAR assemblies of some Waymo vehicles as a form of protest in 2023. Smaller issues persist, too. We recently covered how Waymo pays gig workers to close doors left open by departing customers.

In spite of these issues, Waymo persists. Google money pours in: the company announced it rasied $16 billion in funding during a recent round, and the project as a whole is valued at $126 billion. Expansions persist, and Waymo has said it is already providing more than 400,000 paid trips in its active markets. Despite pushback from city residents, crashes, and the awkward pitfalls of removing a human being from the rideshare industry, that means more than 20 million trips since the first.