Waymo hits 250,000 weekly paid rides, eyes new partnerships for growth

The age of robotaxis is no longer a distant future. It's happening right now. Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle division, announced it is now delivering more than 250,000 paid rides per week across the United States, a major milestone that signals growing public comfort with driverless transportation.

The news came during Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings call, where CEO Sundar Pichai outlined Waymo’s ambitions to scale even further.

“We can’t possibly do it all ourselves,” Pichai said, explaining that Waymo is expanding partnerships with Uber, automakers, and fleet maintenance companies to support its rapid growth.

Waymo’s robotaxis are currently operating commercially in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin, with plans to launch in Atlanta this summer through its collaboration with Uber. The 250,000-ride mark reflects a sharp increase from 200,000 weekly rides in February, fueled by new city openings and expansions​.

Personal vehicles could be next

Though Waymo’s exact long-term business model is still evolving, Pichai hinted at future options that could include personal ownership of vehicles equipped with Waymo’s self-driving technology. Waymo currently operates as a full-on ride-hailing company.

Interestingly, Waymo is currently ahead of Tesla, which has promised to launch a driverless ride-hailing service in Austin by June using its Model Y vehicles. Musk was not impressed though.

In an earnings call last week, he told investors that Waymo's vehicles "cost way more money" because of their "expensive sensor suite." He then went on to predict that Tesla would eventually dominate the industry with "99% market share or something ridiculous."

Former Waymo CEO John Krafcik didn’t take that lying down.

“Tesla has never competed with Waymo. They've never sold a robotaxi ride to a public rider, but they've sold a lot of cars. And although Tesla hopes to compete with Waymo someday, they've failed utterly and completely at this for each of the 10 years they've been talking about it," Krafcik fired back.

Other companies in the autonomous driving race include Amazon's Zoox, Mobileye, May Mobility, WeRide, and Baidu's Apollo Go, but none have yet reached Waymo’s current level of commercial scale.