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📂 Category: Transportation,AI,Government & Policy,Waymo
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Waymo continues to expand its reach, with the robotaxi company posting on Friday that it is now “officially licensed to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State.”
Waymo already operates in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles (and outside of California as well, in Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix). But maps published by the California Department of Motor Vehicles showed that the company can now test and deploy its self-driving vehicles across a much larger area in both the Bay Area and Southern California.
In the Bay Area, Waymo’s approved areas of operations now include most of the East Bay and North Bay (including Napa/Wine Country), as well as Sacramento. In Southern California, the company’s approved area now extends from Santa Clarita (north of Los Angeles) to San Diego.
The company will need additional regulatory approval before it can carry paying passengers in some of these areas, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Although Waymo’s post doesn’t offer many details about when it plans to actually start offering rides in all of these new areas, the company did write: “Next stop: welcoming passengers to San Diego in mid-2026!”
The company had previously announced its intention to launch in San Diego next year, along with Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, Seattle, and Washington, DC.
There’s been a lot of Waymo expansion news in the past few weeks, with the company announcing it will be entering Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa; It removes safe drivers before its commercial launch in Miami; It will begin offering trips using highways in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.
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We discussed the growth of Waymo and other robotaxi companies on a recent episode of the Equity podcast. My co-host Sean O’Kane noted that as Waymo begins to offer more unrestricted access across the Bay Area, people could spend a lot more time in their robotaxis — so we may see them using the service in new, weird, or even dangerous ways.
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