Waymo gives its first rides in Atlanta with employee-only service

Auto mode activated: We’re beginning our first fully autonomous miles for Waymo employees in Atlanta, building on years of experience and 33M+ miles across SF, PHX, LA, and ATX. Public autonomous rides will come to Atlantans exclusively through @Uber later this year. pic.twitter.com/NQ2uahp481

— Waymo (@Waymo) January 30, 2025

Waymo LLC announced today that it’s giving its first fully autonomous rides to employees in Atlanta. This is the first step towards a public deployment the self-driving unit of Alphabet Inc. has planned for later this year with the help of Uber Technologies Inc.

According to The Verge, this deployment is just the beginning of Waymo’s plans this year. The company said it will send autonomous vehicles (AVs) to 10 new cities in 2025, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego. In these new cities, Waymo’s vehicles will be manually driven initially.

The company said it’s interested in seeing how its self-driving system adapts to different weather conditions and driving environments. It said these “road trips” will not necessarily lead to commercial deployments. It has a similar road trip planned for Tokyo this year.

Waymo is a clear leader in the robotaxi industry. Currently, it provides over 150,000 trips per week across Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin. The company is also planning to begin testing its robotaxi service in Miami in 2025. 

Typically, Waymo robotaxis can be hailed directly with its own app. However, in 2023, the company brought its service to Uber, starting in Phoenix. The services offered will include local deliveries and ride-hailing trips. Phoenix riders can still hail a robotaxi directly from the Waymo One app as well.

Waymo kept its foot on the gas in 2024

Waymo’s longtime rival Cruise spent 2024 in the breakdown lane, culminating in General Motors announcing that it will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi deployment work. Meanwhile, Waymo spent the year announcing new deployments and technology. 

For instance, Waymo launched its first service in Los Angeles and expanded services in San Francisco and Phoenix. It also released its sixth-generation robotaxi. 

The latest robotaxi is equipped with 13 cameras, four lidar sensors, six radar sensors, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs). The company said it optimized this new sensor suite for greater performance at a significantly reduced cost.

The sensors provide the Waymo Driver with overlapping fields of view, all around the vehicle, up to 500 m (1,640.4 ft.) away, day and night, and in a range of weather conditions, it said.

And that isn’t all. In addition to the deployments and new vehicle, Waymo closed a $5.6 billion funding round. The round was led by Alphabet and included participation from other big investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.

Waymo still faces competition from robotaxi companies like Zoox and Nuro, which are earlier in their deployment journeys. In 2024, Nuro expanded its capabilities using zero-occupant vehicles with the Nuro Driver system, while Zoox grew its operations in California and Nevada. During CES 2025, Mike Oitzman, senior editor at The Robot Report, took a ride in a Zoox robotaxi. 

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