Why it matters: North Texas has been an early proving ground for autonomous technology.
- Autonomous trucking companies are testing their fleets on the region’s highways and Lyft plans to offer self-driving taxis in Dallas next year.
The intrigue: Waymo said the high traffic fatality rate in Dallas influenced its decision to expand its all-electric, self-driving fleet to the city.
- “There’s also a notable opportunity for us to improve road safety,” the company said in a news release.
State of play: Waymo is in its early testing phase in Dallas and plans to start offering rides next year.
- The rides will run 24/7 and have similar pricing to other cities — such as Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco — where Waymo operates.
How it works: Riders will be able to request a ride using the Waymo app, which will tell them the estimated price, wait time and time of arrival.
- The vehicles have exterior and interior cameras to record incidents and rule violations. Support staff can hear inside in the vehicles only after an incident or to assist. Avis Budget Group will manage the fleet of vehicles.
Zoom out: A Waymo spokesperson told Axios the company has tested its technology in more than 10 U.S. cities so far this year.
Lyft is also planning to operate robotaxis in Dallas “as soon as 2026”, so we’ll see who gets going first. I missed the original announcement of this coming attraction, which Waymo made on July 28, but fortunately Ginger caught it for this week’s roundup.
More from Reuters:
In Dallas, Waymo will operate through a new multi-year partnership with car rental company Avis Budget Group, which will manage fleet operations, including maintenance and depot infrastructure, Waymo said in a blog.
Waymo currently serves more than 250,000 paid trips every week with about 1,500 vehicles in cities such as Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.
[…]
This year, Waymo began its service in Austin exclusively on the Uber platform, months before Tesla started a limited robotaxi trial in the city with about a dozen Model Y SUVs and a human safety monitor in the front passenger seat.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the company will rapidly expand its robotaxi services to other U.S. cities and is seeking regulatory approval from California, Nevada, Florida, and Arizona.
Commercializing autonomous vehicles has been challenging, with several companies such as GM’s Cruise shutting down after collisions, recalls, and federal investigations.
Amazon-backed Zoox is among the few still operating, preparing to launch commercial services later this year.
Until Tesla’s Austin trial, Waymo was the only company to operate paid driverless taxis in the United States.
Rides will be available through the Waymo app. The company is also planning launches in Miami and Washington, D.C., in 2026 as part of its broader national rollout.
As NBC DFW reminds us, Waymo had been in Houston earlier this year as part of a road trip that is now coming to a close. I’d completely forgotten about that, most likely because I didn’t see or hear anything about the road trip while it was supposedly here.
Finally, CNet brings some numbers.
Waymo currently operates fully autonomous rides for the general public in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Austin, Texas, which take place aboard the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. The vehicles can be summoned either via the Waymo One app or Uber, depending on the city. Waymo plans to begin offering rides in Washington, DC, and Miami starting in 2026. In April, it said it’ll begin driving its vehicles on Tokyo’s streets, making this the company’s first international location.
Earlier this month, Waymo’s vehicles also arrived on the streets of New York City, where the company will begin by manually collecting driving data. It’s also rolling out a limited fleet of vehicles with human drivers in Philadelphia. The goal is to develop its technology and possibly expand its ride-hailing service to those cities someday.
In January, Waymo announced it would begin testing with manually driven vehicles in 10 new cities this year, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego. And in April, it said it reached a preliminary agreement with Toyota to “explore a collaboration” geared toward developing autonomous driving tech, which could someday be factored into personally owned vehicles.
Waymo’s expansion extends to its manufacturing facilities as well. In May, the company said it’s opening a new, 239,000-square-foot autonomous vehicle factory in the Phoenix area. The plan is to add 2,000 more fully autonomous Jaguar I-Pace vehicles to its existing 1,500-vehicle fleet. Notably, Waymo indicated it received its “final delivery from Jaguar” earlier this year, as it plans for future iterations of its driverless rides. Waymo added that the “facility’s flexible design” will allow it to integrate its upcoming sixth-generation self-driving technology into new vehicles, starting with the all-electric Zeekr RT.
In October, Waymo also announced that it’s partnering with Hyundai to bring the next generation of its technology into Ioniq 5 SUVs. In the years to come, riders will be able to summon those all-electric, autonomous vehicles using the Waymo One app.
The self-driving company says it provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week and drives across more than 700 square miles across the US. I’ve hailed several rides myself in San Francisco and, as off-putting as it can seem at first (especially to see a steering wheel turn by itself), I quickly adjusted, and it soon felt like an ordinary ride.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been pushback as Waymo rolls out to more cities. The company’s vehicles have been involved in a handful of high-profile collisions, including one with a bicyclist in San Francisco and another with a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (Waymo recalled and updated its software to address the issue.)
Waymo’s Safety Impact report notes that over the course of 71 million autonomous miles driven through March 2025, its Waymo Driver technology had 88% fewer crashes leading to serious injuries or worse and 78% fewer injury-causing crashes, compared with “an average human driver over the same distance in our operating cities.” It also reported significantly fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians (93%), cyclists (81%) and motorcyclists (86%).
The safety aspect of this is the most compelling for me. The tech isn’t fully there yet – see Cruise’s flameout for a prime example – but Waymo has the longest track record, and its numbers attest to that. There are very different competing visions for what an autonomous driving future looks like, and however it goes the changes will be profound. I’m still not convinced that there’s enough of a market for all of this yet – if you already own a car, as so many of us do, how often do you even think about taking some kind of ride service anywhere? – but in the longer term I’m sure this will be the norm. What’s your level of interest in these things? Would you become a robotaxi landlord, would you just never buy another car and just depend on robotaxis, or would you keep on doing what you’ve always done? Leave a comment and let us know. KERA has more.