Waymo begins self-testing in Philadelphia

Waymo is adding four more cities to its growing list of robotaxi launches. The company announced Wednesday that it has begun testing its self-driving vehicles (with a safety monitoring device) in Philadelphia, and that it will begin manual driving to collect data in Baltimore, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.

Waymo did not provide a timeline for when it plans to launch commercial services in those locations, and we do not know whether the Alphabet-owned company will partner with other companies to operate robotaxis in each of them. This has been the move in cities like Atlanta and Austin, for example, where Waymo has partnered with Uber to boost the rollout of robotaxis.

But the new locations join a list of more than 20 cities where the company is offering flights, preparing for a commercial launch or testing. Waymo now also offers freeway rides in Los Angeles, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company plans to make one million trips per week by the end of 2026.

Waymo has done all this while claiming to operate at a level five times safer than humans, according to data the company recently released.

But the expansion did not come without its problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how the company’s vehicles operated near school buses, after a Waymo car was photographed driving around a parked bus in Atlanta in September.

This week, Austin news outlet KXAN published a report showing Waymo vehicles had passed school buses that were in the process of unloading or loading children multiple times — including after Waymo claimed it had shipped software updates to address the issue.