Waymo Opens Up Service in Orlando, Dallas, Houston, & San Antonio

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Waymo’s rapid 2026 expansion continues. In fact, today marked another notable first for the company. For the first time in Waymo’s history, it has opened up commercial service to the public in multiple cities at once. In fact, it did so in four major cities today — Orlando, Florida, as well as Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas.

Waymo now offers robotaxi service in 10 metro areas across the United States.

Waymo is still scaling up service gradually in new cities like this, but it shouldn’t be long until anyone in these cities can get a Waymo robotaxi ride. “Select riders from the tens of thousands in these cities who have downloaded the Waymo app will receive an invitation to take their first local rides today,” Waymo wrote earlier today. “We will be inviting new riders on a rolling basis to ensure a seamless experience across our initial service areas, as we meaningfully scale our operations ahead of opening our service to everyone later this year.”

The company also subtly threw shade at longtime theoretical rival Tesla. Or perhaps it just wanted to emphasize what it offers that others don’t — but having followed this industry and debate for the past decade plus, I’m confident the following quote involves a bit of shade tossing with regards to how widely Waymo is operating, its safety first approach, and its emphasis on getting community buy-in. “Waymo is the only company successfully operating a commercial fully autonomous ride-hailing service at scale in multiple complex urban environments, and we’re ramping up with these new expansions. We’ll continue to follow our market entry playbook, always leading with safety, and continue to engage the community to earn trust and generate excitement to ride,” the Alphabet/(once Google) company wrote.

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana added that the company is on track to offering 1 million rides a day by the end of the year, and that it aims to get its reach up to 20+ cities soon. The company has already traveled more than 200 million miles autonomously.

Also, while it’s long been pitched that Tesla is trying to develop and launch self-driving capability that is based on general AI and thus able to drive the same anywhere whereas Waymo tailors its service to individual cities much more so by mapping and responding to the intricacies of each city it enters, the Alphabet company actually took this opportunity to say that its technology is also a generalized solution. “Our generalizable technology handles each city’s unique environment, from the bright midday sun to sudden downpours to freezing temperatures. New riders will use our reliable service to travel to their city’s popular destinations, like a night out in Dallas’s Bishop Arts District, seeing a show at Houston’s Toyota Center, catching a San Antonio Spurs game, or experiencing one of Orlando’s latest attractions.” So, even while alluding to city-specific routes and different challenges in different environments, Waymo was clear to slip in there that its self-driving technology is a generalized AI solution.

Per usual, Waymo includes quotations from mayors and other notable people from these four new cities. This is the one that I found exciting and a bit interesting: “I am a big fan of Waymo and have ridden in them many times on the West Coast—it is a fun and futuristic experience,” said Houston City Council Member Sallie Alcorn. “I’m thrilled that we are now launching limited access public rides here in Houston. It will give both Houstonians and visitors another safe, high-tech way to get around during exciting upcoming events like the World Baseball Classic and the World Cup.”

As has become the norm for the company, in addition to emphasizing its focus on safety at the beginning of the announcement and in quotes in the middle, it brought the matter back up at the end as well. “Data from over 127 million miles traveled shows we achieved a ten-fold reduction in serious injury or worse crashes and 12-fold reduction in injury crashes with pedestrians compared to human drivers, and we are excited to bring these safety benefits to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando,” the company wrote. Clever comms strategy to keep emphasizing safety benefits throughout every announcement at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.

Waymo has also added more and more of a focus on its engagement with local communities and special interest groups. “We believe that the best way to serve a community is to listen to the people who live there. That’s why we’re working closely with local organizations in these new cities — including Downtown Dallas Inc., Bike Houston, Vibrant Works, and Lighthouse Central Florida — to ensure our service meets the diverse needs of their residents,” the company added here.

Waymo seems to be doing everything right. Can it eventually become profitable and stay competitive as more companies enter the robotaxi arena? We’ll see. It’s certainly leading the way and growing its head start while building a big and happy customer base.