Waymo plans to start testing autonomous vehicles in 10 new cities this year, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego, according to The Verge. Although this doesn’t mean the company will launch commercial operations in any of these cities — or even test them in autonomous mode. Waymo told The Verge it will send less than 10 AVs to each city, where they will be manually driven.
The news comes a few hours before Tesla’s 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call, where investors will be listening for updates to the automaker’s robotaxi and self-driving initiatives.
Waymo is already operating a commercial robotaxi service in three cities — Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — with plans to launch in Austin, Atlanta, and Miami this year.
The Alphabet-owned company has not confirmed if it will launch a robotaxi service in any of the cities it tests in this year. Usually, Waymo sends a limited human-driven fleet to test across a broad range of city and driving conditions and get a sense of how its system adapts to new environments.
In 2024, Waymo tested its vehicles in Michigan and upstate New York to test its technology in harsher winter conditions.