Waymo has doubled its weekly robotaxi rides to 500,000 in under a year, and it's aiming for a million by the end of 2026

[Jenny75]

Waymo has doubled its weekly ridership from around 250,000 to 500,000 rides in less than a year, now operating a fleet of roughly 3,500 vehicles that have collectively driven over 4 million miles, with the company targeting a full 1 million weekly rides by the end of 2026. That growth has come alongside genuine geographic expansion, with the service now running in 15 cities compared to just three back in September 2024, a fivefold increase in coverage over roughly two years.

Waymo isn't alone in this race, however, and the wider robotaxi and autonomous vehicle industry is scaling rapidly across multiple competitors simultaneously. Zoox is preparing to launch in Austin and Miami later in 2026 while quadrupling its service area in San Francisco and more than doubling available destinations in Las Vegas, including adding stops at the Sphere, T-Mobile Arena and the Las Vegas Convention Center. Chinese competitors are scaling just as aggressively, with Pony.ai reporting $16.6 million in 2025 robotaxi revenue from a fleet of 1,446 vehicles targeting 3,000 by 2026 across more than 20 cities, and WeRide posting $21.2 million in 2025 revenue and $29.6 million in gross profit from 2,113 vehicles operating across 12 countries and more than 40 cities, running with a remote assistance ratio of just one human operator per 40 vehicles.

The scale of the wider opportunity these companies are chasing is enormous, with Uber and Lyft alone already handling a combined 675,000 human driven trips daily in New York City by itself, giving a sense of just how much room for growth still exists even as robotaxi services scale into the hundreds of thousands of weekly rides across multiple cities and countries.

Waymo Hits 500,000 Weekly Rides and Over 4 Million Mileswww.thedriverlessdigest.com