Alphabet-owned Waymo has suspended its driverless ride-hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area after blackouts plagued the city Saturday afternoon.

“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” a Waymo spokesperson tells CNBC. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon. We appreciate your patience and will provide further updates as soon as they are available.”

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Waymo notice of service outage in San Francisco.

Source: Waymo

As power outages spread yesterday, videos shared on social media appeared to show multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic in different parts of the city.

San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 9:45 p.m. local time, including one he photographed on Turk Boulevard near Parker Avenue.

“They were just stopping in the middle of the street,” Schoolfield said.

A Waymo vehicle stuck between Parker and Beaumont, on the north side of Turk Boulevard in San Francisco.

Credit: Matt Schoolfield

The power outages began around 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked roughly two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power, mainly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco.

PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a substation that resulted in “significant and extensive” damage, and said it could not yet provide a precise timeline for full restoration.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a 9 p.m. update on X that police officers, fire crews, parking control officers and city ambassadors were deployed across affected neighborhoods as transit service gradually resumed. “Waymo has also paused service,” Lurie said.

Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X: “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.”

Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco.

Tesla’s local ride-hailing service uses vehicles equipped with “FSD (Supervised),” a premium driver assistance system. The service requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times.

According to state regulators — including the California Department of Motor Vehicles and California Public Utilities Commission — Tesla has not obtained permits to conduct driverless testing or services in the state without human safety supervisors behind the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

Tesla is vying to become a robotaxi titan, but does not yet operate commercial, driverless services. Tesla’s Robotaxi app allows users to hail a ride; however, its vehicles currently have human safety supervisors or drivers on board, even in states where the company has obtained permits for driverless operations.

Waymo, which leads the nascent industry in the West, is Tesla’s chief competitor in AVs, along with Chinese players like Baidu-owned Apollo Go.

The outage-related disruptions in San Francisco come as robotaxi services are becoming more common in other major U.S. cities. Waymo is among a small number of companies operating fully driverless ride-hailing services for the public, even as unease about autonomous vehicles remains high.

A survey by the American Automobile Association earlier this year found that about two-thirds of U.S. drivers said they were fearful of autonomous vehicles.

The Waymo pause in San Francisco indicates cities are not yet ready for highly automated vehicles to inundate their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of “How to Make AI Useful.”

“Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is,” he said.

Reimer noted that power outages are entirely predictable. “Not for eternity, but in the foreseeable future, we will need to mix human and machine intelligence, and have human backup systems in place around highly automated systems, including robotaxis,” he said.

State and city regulators will need to consider what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should be in their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should be held responsible for “chaos gridlock,” just as human drivers would be held responsible for how they drive during a blackout.

Waymo did not say when its service would resume and did not specify whether collisions involving its vehicles had occurred during the blackout.

Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

— CNBC’s Riya Bhattacharjee contributed reporting.

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A row of Waymo vehicles burn on a street during an anti-ICE protest in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025.

Benjamin Hanson | Afp | Getty Images

Several Waymo autonomous vehicles were set ablaze in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday amid widespread protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

A spokesperson for the Alphabet-owned company confirmed that five Waymo vehicles were vandalized in the vicinity of the protests and were unable to be retrieved. Waymo suspended service in the protest area until it was deemed safe, the spokesperson added.

Waymo responded with guidance from the Los Angeles Police Department, the spokesperson said.

A Waymo car burns in the street as smoke billows during protests in Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025.

David Pashaee | Afp | Getty Images

The protests erupted in downtown LA on Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted raids in the city and surrounding communities. Demonstrations were largely peaceful, but tensions flared Saturday and Sunday, with police clashing with protesters near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown LA.

California National Guard members arrived in the city on Sunday after Trump signed an order to deploy 2,000 troops in response to the protests. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state plans to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration after it “illegally acted to federalize the National Guard,” Newsom wrote in a post Monday on X.

Trump told reporters outside the White House Monday afternoon that he would support arresting Newsom after Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest the governor, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, and anyone else who obstructed immigration enforcement actions in California.

The remains of a burned Waymo vehicle in the street following a night of protests in response to federal immigration operations in Los Angeles, on June 9, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

In one photo, a line of Waymo robotaxis can be seen engulfed in flames, with anti-ICE graffiti scrawled across the cars’ hoods and doors. It’s unclear whether the vehicles were deliberately targeted.

Some people were seen tossing Lime e-scooters into the burning Waymo vehicles, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Burning lithium-ion batteries release toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride, posing risks to responders and those nearby,” the LAPD said in a statement posted on X.

A shirtless protester stands atop a Waymo vehicle during an anti-ICE protest in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025.

Benjamin Hanson | Afp | Getty Images

A Waymo in San Francisco’s Financial District was also vandalized with graffiti on Sunday as people demonstrated to support the protests against immigration raids in L.A., according to a Reddit post. It’s unclear how many vehicles were affected.

Waymo began offering robotaxi rides across 80-plus square miles of LA in 2024. The service also operates in parts of San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, Texas.

The company has more than 1,500 vehicles in its fleet across L.A., San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin.

Analysts from Cowen estimate that Waymo vehicles cost $160,000 a piece and that the company could have more than 15,000 taxis in its fleet by 2030, as it “dramatically” ramps up production. The firm has a buy rating on Alphabet shares.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Jennifer Elias contributed reporting to this article.

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A Waymo autonomous vehicle drives along Masonic Avenue on April 11, 2022 in San Francisco, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Alphabet’s Waymo unit has received approval to expand its autonomous ride-hailing service to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose.

In March, the company submitted a request to the California Public Utilities Commission to gain approval for its latest passenger safety plan, a key step in gaining permission to operate driverless vehicles across a broader area. On Monday, the proposed expansion was approved, allowing for Waymo’s driverless coverage to extend from San Francisco down through the Peninsula.

“We’re very excited to share that the CPUC has approved our application to operate our fully autonomous commercial ride-hailing service in the South Bay and nearly all of San Jose!” the company wrote in a post on X on Monday. “While this won’t change our operations in the near-term, we’re looking forward to bringing the benefits of Waymo One to more of the Bay Area in the future.”

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Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 22, 2025.

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Ride-hailing and food delivery app Uber is opening its “interest list” to users in Austin, Texas, who want to be first in line for Waymo robotaxis there.

The company said in a statement that users will “be able to travel across 37 square miles of Austin — from Hyde Park, to Downtown, to Montopolis” — when the Uber-Waymo service launches soon.

The list allows users to receive Uber updates and bolsters their odds of being matched with a Waymo autonomous vehicle upon launch.

The vehicles that will be part of the Austin service are Jaguar i-Pace electric models equipped with Waymo’s driverless systems and labeled with both Waymo and Uber branding.

The Waymo rides in Austin will only be available through the Uber app, unlike in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where riders hail them through the Waymo One app.

Uber faced investor pressure last year to step up its autonomous vehicle strategy after Tesla promised it would soon start producing robotaxis, and had begun testing a ride-hailing app with some of its employees.

While Tesla does not make vehicles that are safe to use without a human driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times, Elon Musk’s automaker in January said it will “begin launching” a driverless ride-hailing business “later this year” starting in Austin.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation, testing and operating a commercial robotaxi service in the state does not require the same types of special licenses and permits that other states require.

“Texas law allows for AV testing and operations on Texas roadways as long as they meet the same safety and insurance requirements as every other vehicle on the road,” a spokesperson for the department told CNBC by email.

Uber reported revenue growth for the fourth quarter of 20% on Wednesday, topping analysts’ estimates. But the stock slid as the company issued weak bookings guidance for the first quarter.

Correction: A prior version of this story had an incorrect detail about Uber’s ride-hailing app.

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A Waymo rider-only robotaxi is seen during a test ride in San Francisco, California, U.S., December 9, 2022. 

Paresh Dave | Reuters

Despite General Motor’s decision to shutter its Cruise robotaxi business earlier this month, the U.S. has never been closer to a driverless future. 

For the autonomous vehicle industry, 2024 will be remembered as the year that at least one major U.S. player — Alphabet-owned Waymo — saw glimmers of mainstream adoption and made strides toward commercial viability.

That came after a rocky start for the self-driving car industry domestically. 

Following a decade of sizable venture investments in AV companies, Uber sold off its self-driving business in 2020 after a fatal collision, and two years later Ford abandoned its stake in its robotaxi developers Argo.AI. In 2023, Cruise paused all of its driverless operations after collisions led to investigations and a suspension of its licenses in California. When GM decided to retreat from the robotaxi business earlier this month, it had already poured $10 billion into Cruise. 

Waymo may have outlasted Cruise to lead the U.S. market but domestic competitors are working to catch up, too — most notably Elon Musk’s automaker Tesla and Amazon-owned Zoox.

At stake is a share of a massive market for ride-hailing services in and beyond the U.S. According to research by Fortune Business Insights, the global ride-sharing market is projected to grow from an estimated $123.08 billion in 2024 to $480.09 billion by 2032.

As 2025 approaches, here’s where these major players stand.

Hyundai Motor and Waymo have agreed to a multiyear, strategic partnership that includes the self-driving company adding the South Korean automaker’s Ioniq 5 electric vehicle to its robotaxi fleet.

Courtesy image

Waymo pulls way ahead

What began as “project chauffeur” at Google in 2009 became a publicly available, commercial robotaxi service across multiple U.S. cities this year.

The project, rebranded as Waymo in 2016, has now completed more than 5 million autonomous trips in total, the company said last week. That’s about a sevenfold increase from November 2023, when Waymo said it had completed around 700,000 driverless ride-hailing trips.

Waymo’s service now operates in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, covering more than 500 square miles of public roads.

The company dropped its digital velvet rope in June and opened its robotaxi service to all San Franciscans, allowing them to hail rides via the Waymo One app. Opening to the general public proved to riders, and internally, that the company’s fleet of AVs can work well in the traffic conditions of a complex urban environment.

In July, Alphabet’s then-CFO, Ruth Porat, announced a multiyear investment by Google’s parent into Waymo on an earnings call, which amounted to $5.6 billion in total, with $5 billion of that coming from Alphabet.

Waymo co-CEOs, Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, told employees at an all-hands meeting in November that they should scale up as aggressively as possible but do so with safety at the forefront of all their efforts, company insiders told CNBC.

A big focus for Waymo in 2025 will be expanding its robotaxi service to more cities, winning over riders and continuing research and development on newer technology that will allow the company’s AVs to operate in more weather and traffic conditions.

Waymo plans to launch a commercial service in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta, with rides available through the Uber app next year. It’s also begun testing in Miami with plans to offer rides to the public there in 2026.

Earlier this month, Waymo announced its first international testing destination in Tokyo. Waymo said it’s partnered with the taxi app GO and one of Japan’s largest taxi operators, Nihon Kotsu, and will commence test rides in early 2025.

Waymo showed off its next generation of self-driving vehicles, which it will be making with Chinese auto giant Geely, in August. Waymo’s custom hardware and software will be integrated into the Geely Zeekr electric SUVs. For this new robotaxi, Waymo was able to reduce the number of cameras on board from 29 to 13 and lower the number of costly lidar sensors on board from five to four.

The company also announced a partnership with Hyundai in October to integrate the automaker’s Ioniq 5 SUV into Waymo’s fleet of vehicles. The companies said they will begin testing the Waymo Ioniq 5s by late 2025. 

Waymo is already conducting testing and validation drives in Detroit, Buffalo, New York, and at a test track in Columbus, Ohio, with its Jaguar I-Pace and newer Geely Zeekr vehicles to understand how these systems will perform in different types of traffic and weather.

Given its progress and increasing presence on U.S. streets, Waymo received plenty of social media and publicity in 2024, stirring delight and controversy.

In a Reddit channel, R/Waymo, users document every incident involving the company, including one in February where a crowd attacked a Waymo vehicle and set it on fire. The forum also dissected instances when Waymo vehicles were involved in collisions or backed up traffic.

A separate incident went viral when a woman posted on X in September that she was stuck in her Waymo robotaxi when two men stopped it by standing outside of the vehicle, asking for her phone number.

To maintain public trust in the safety of its service, Waymo has built a large public affairs operation, published more detailed safety reports in 2024, and is working closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, first responders and authorities in the cities where it operates.

Tesla’s Cybercab robotaxi is displayed during the AutoMobility LA 2024 auto show at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, November 21, 2024. 

Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

Tesla unwraps its robotaxi concept

Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has been promising “robotaxi-ready” cars for about a decade. Each year since 2016, he has declared the company is about a year away from making his vision a reality, but Tesla still doesn’t manufacture robotaxis or run a driverless ride-hailing service.

While Tesla didn’t deliver on its robotaxi promises in 2024, Musk revealed the look and feel of Tesla’s “dedicated robotaxi” at an event in October held at a movie studio lot in Burbank, California. He called the vehicle the Cybercab and said Tesla wants to produce it by 2027 and sell it for under $30,000.

The fan-pleasing robotaxi concept was a two-seater with butterfly doors and no steering wheel or pedals. The Petersen Automotive Museum already added a preproduction Cybercab to its collection earlier this month.

At the October event, Tesla also showed off the Robovan, a low-clearance autonomous bus with an art deco design aesthetic.

Musk has promised that Tesla’s Model Y and other vehicles will be able to function as robotaxis as early as 2025 once their systems are upgraded. Model Y vehicles, without safety drivers on board, also circulated in the closed environment of the studio lot at the Burbank event, showing how Tesla envisions they will function as robotaxis.

At the time of that “We, Robot” event, Tesla had not applied for licenses and permits that would allow it to operate a commercial robotaxi service in major U.S. markets where they are required by city or state authorities.

Despite the lack of permits and licenses, Musk told analysts in an October earnings call that Tesla had already built a “development app” allowing employees to request a ride that would take them anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Bullish investors say Tesla will make good on its driverless technology promises as early as next year, but critics remain skeptical in part because of Musk’s many missed deadlines on robotaxis.

Tesla currently sells driver assistance systems, including its standard Autopilot option and a premium paid option called Full Self-Driving supervised. In correspondence with government agencies, Tesla calls these “partially automated” systems that are not robotaxi-ready. In fine print in its EV manuals, Tesla says FSD and Autopilot require a human driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times.

This year, Tesla corresponded with authorities in Austin regarding safety expectations for its autonomous vehicle technology.

Musk has repeatedly painted regulation as a hurdle that prevented Tesla from putting self-driving cars on U.S. roads. On a Tesla earnings call on Oct. 23, Musk said he would use his sway with now President-elect Donald Trump to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.”

However, AV policy expert Bryant Walker Smith rejected the notion that regulation has curtailed any robotaxi business in a post for Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Pointing to Waymo as an example, Walker Smith wrote, “AVs can be — and in fact are — lawfully deployed and regulated under existing federal statutory law.”

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. 

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Zoox ‘toasters’ heat up

Well before Tesla showed off its Robovan and Cybercab designs, Zoox in February secured important permits allowing it to carry members of the public in its autonomous vehicles in Foster City, California, this year.

Founded in 2014 and acquired by Amazon in 2020 in a deal worth around $1.3 billion, Zoox has developed a unique self-driving shuttle that features big side windows, inward-facing seats and no steering wheel, driver’s seat or traditional windshield.

Zoox in March expanded the environmental conditions its AVs can handle on public roads to include “nighttime driving, driving under light rain and damp road conditions, and at speeds up to 45 mph,” a spokesperson told CNBC.

The company’s vehicles can carry four adults and luggage comfortably, and the small shuttles feature calming lighting, ambient music and  interior cameras to monitor what’s happening inside the cabin. Some early riders have described the look of the Zoox vehicles as “futuristic hot dog toasters” or “toasters on wheels.”

Led by CEO Aicha Evans, Zoox is aiming to offer free rides to more members of the public early next year, before opening up to paying customers and the general public.

The service will start in Las Vegas and expand to San Francisco, the company told CNBC. It will begin with an early rider program called Zoox Explorers, allowing select users to ride in a Zoox for free and provide feedback.

With its robotaxis currently on public roads in Las Vegas, San Francisco and Foster City, this summer, Zoox also began testing in Austin and Miami, where its test fleet is still driving.

The company has also been attracting senior talent. One notable recent hire was Zheng Gao, previously the leader of Tesla’s autopilot hardware design team, now director of hardware engineering for Zoox.

A in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday Aug. 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cruise’s closure

Despite clear demand for robotaxi rides in the U.S. market, GM surprised some longtime industry observers when it announced earlier this month that it was exiting the business.

“Cruise was well on its way to a robotaxi business, but when you look at the fact you’re deploying a fleet, there’s a whole operations piece of doing that,” GM CEO Mary Barra said on a call announcing the strategic change. 

The Detroit automaker will now focus on the development of what it calls “personal autonomous vehicles” instead of robotaxis. GM has yet to determine how many of Cruise’s 2,300 employees will move into its broader tech team.

“In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies,” Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, who sold Cruise to GM in 2016 and left the company in November 2023, posted on X after the automaker’s exit announcement. 

An early entrant in the U.S. robotaxi market, Cruise grounded its driverless operations in October 2023, shortly before Vogt’s departure. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fined Cruise $1.5 million after the company failed to disclose details of a serious crash that month involving a pedestrian.

A third-party probe into the incident ordered by GM and Cruise found that culture issues, ineptitude and poor leadership led to the accident.

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Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct amount of autonomous trips Waymo has completed by year.

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A Waymo rider-only robotaxi is seen during a test ride in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 2022.

Paresh Dave | Reuters

Alphabet-owned Waymo announced Monday that it will start testing its autonomous vehicles in Tokyo in early 2025, the company’s first step toward international expansion. 

Waymo hasn’t committed to start commercial service in Tokyo yet, but the robotaxi developer will partner with Japan’s largest taxi operator, Nihon Kotsu, and taxi app GO to start testing its Jaguar I-PACE vehicles in Tokyo’s streets.

To start, Nihon Kotsu drivers will manually operate the Waymo vehicles to map key areas of the Japanese capital, including Minato, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Chiyoda, Chūō, Shinagawa, and Kōtō. 

Data from the manned test drives will help train the company’s AI systems. Waymo will also test its robotaxis on a closed course in the U.S. built to mimic driving conditions in Japan.

This is the first phase of the partnerships, which will last several quarters, Waymo told CNBC, adding that it expects to remain in Japan for an extended period.

“Our upcoming road trip to Tokyo gives us the chance to work alongside local partners, government officials, and community groups to understand the new landscape,” Waymo said in a statement. “We’ll learn how Waymo can serve Tokyo’s residents and become a beneficial part of the city’s transportation ecosystem.”

Nihon Kotsu will oversee the management and servicing of Waymo’s vehicles in Japan, the companies said.

Waymo announced a series of expansions across the U.S. in 2024. Earlier this month, the company announced new testing in Miami in 2025, it made its driverless ride hail service available across Los Angeles in November, and in September, it announced planned expansions into Austin and Atlanta in partnership with Uber. 

The move into Japan marks the company’s first in a left-hand traffic market.

Both the Japanese national government and Tokyo Metropolitan government see driverless technology as a potential boon to the country’s aging population, according to research by the World Economic Forum.

Tokyo has designated certain areas as “test zones” for self-driving cars hoping to hasten the arrival of safe driverless transportation systems there.

Several developers are working on autonomous vehicles in Japan, including local startup Tier IV and ZMP, a robotics company that is testing delivery vehicles and buses in Tokyo. Monet Technologies, which is partly owned by Toyota, announced plans to test a self-driving taxi service in Tokyo’s Odaiba district earlier this year.

Waymo’s Japan expansion announcement comes a week after General Motors announced it was abandoning its Cruise robotaxi division. Honda, an outside investor in Cruise, told CNBC that it aimed to launch a driverless ride-hail service in Japan in early 2026 but would re-assess those plans and make adjustments if needed.

Prior to GM’s retreat from robotaxis, Cruise had been one of Waymo’s primary domestic competitors.

WATCH: GM pulls the plug on robotaxi plan

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A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar taxi drives along a street on March 14, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. 

Mario Tama | Getty Images

Waymo has closed a $5.6 billion funding round to expand its robotaxi service in and beyond Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix, where it operates today.

The autonomous vehicle venture is owned by Google parent Alphabet, which led the series C investment in Waymo, alongside earlier backers including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T. Rowe Price.

In a statement to CNBC, Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov said the funding would go toward expansion and advancing the Waymo Driver for business applications.

“With this latest investment, we will continue to welcome more riders into our Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, and in Austin and Atlanta through our expanded partnership with Uber,” they wrote.

The series C funding brings Waymo’s total capital raised to more than $11 billion after it raised $3.2 billion and $2.5 billion in two earlier rounds. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat announced in July that the parent company would commit to a multiyear investment of up to $5 billion in Waymo.

While many companies are testing autonomous vehicles, or AVs, on public roads in the U.S., including well-funded upstarts such as Wayve, Waymo is the only one to operate a commercial robotaxi service in several major metro areas.

The service has been embraced by some women who have safety concerns about riding with unknown human drivers. And it has even been used by parents to send their teens to school when other transit options felt less safe or convenient.

Waymo now conducts more than 100,000 weekly trips for passengers in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, who can hail their robotaxis via the Waymo One app. More recently, Waymo partnered with Uber to launch its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas — home of would-be rival Tesla’s headquarters.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made promises about self-driving cars for more than a decade. This week, he said Tesla would offer a driverless ride-hailing service in Texas and California next year, once the company upgrades the partially automated systems in its existing vehicles, which still require a human driver today.

GM-owned Cruise had been Waymo’s closest competitor in the U.S. until it paused operations following an October 2023 incident in San Francisco in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise AV, after she was first struck by a human driver in another car. Cruise is working to reinstate its service and also plans to partner with Uber.

Self-driving vehicle makers in the U.S. must still prove their technology is safer to use than taxis and trucks with human drivers. As CNBC previously reported, nearly two-thirds of U.S. respondents to a Pew Research Center survey said they would not want to ride in a driverless passenger vehicle if they had the opportunity.

Waymo’s self-reported data suggests that their vehicles crash “far less often than human drivers on public roads,” according to analysis by Understanding AI author Timothy B. Lee.

Still, Waymo has initiated software recalls to improve the safety of its self-driving systems, and its AVs have sometimes blocked traffic, traveled the wrong way down the street, or been involved in collisions, though none resulted in a known fatality or severe injury.

The next-generation robotaxi from Waymo is a Geely Zeekr that’s equipped with its custom sensors and AI “Driver.” Waymo also recently agreed to a multiyear strategic partnership with Hyundai that will add the South Korean automaker’s Ioniq 5 electric vehicle to its robotaxi fleet.

In August, Waymo said it would also test its driverless vehicles in harsher, winter weather including in northern California, upstate New York and Michigan, with the hope of offering robotaxi services beyond the sunbelt, and eventually internationally.

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