Waymo robotaxis surpass 150,000 paid rides per week

Some years, our robot of the year award will go to a brand new robot that completely shook up the industry. For other years, it’s about recognizing an autonomous technology that has weathered economic headwinds, technical challenges, and a tricky regulatory landscape and still found success. This year, that is Waymo LLC’s robotaxis.

Last year, Waymo provided more than 4 million autonomous rides across its deployments. It averaged 150,000 rides per week. This is a massive achievement for an industry that seemed to be growing stagnant just a few years ago.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company worked to expand its robotaxi services throughout the year. It launched its first service in Los Angeles and expanded services in San Francisco and Phoenix.

In addition to expanding its services, Waymo also released an upgraded version of its robotaxi and brought in billions of dollars of additional funding. Its sixth-generation robotaxi has a new sensor suite optimized for greater performance at a significantly reduced cost.

The sensors give the Waymo Driver with overlapping fields of view, all around the vehicle, up to 500 m (1,640.4 ft.) away, day and night, and in a range of weather conditions.

While Waymo has been aggressively expanding its robotaxi services, the company has also kept safety as a priority. In a study it carried out with Swiss Re, Waymo demonstrated that as it has scaled operations across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, the Waymo Driver has significantly outperformed both the overall driving population and the latest generation of human-driven vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS).

Waymo has emerged as a clear leader in the robotaxi market, and it has no plans to slow its expansion anytime soon.

Explore the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards 2025.