Waymo ridership rises in one scheme

Waymo now offers 500,000 paid taxi rides each week across 10 U.S. cities, the company shared in a post on X this week. This staggering figure reflects the accelerating commercial expansion of the Alphabet-owned company. But it’s Waymo’s growth rate in ridership and markets that offers a more compelling story.

In less than two years, the company’s average weekly paid robo-taxi trips have increased tenfold, from 50,000 per week in May 2024 to 500,000 per week today. Over the same two-year time period, Waymo expanded within its initial markets of Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — and beyond to Austin, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Those seven Sun Belt cities were added just last year.

Waymo’s robotaxi fleet has also grown, though the company has guarded those numbers and rarely provides updates. Data submitted in December 2025 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows the company has 3,067 robotaxis equipped with the fifth-generation self-driving system. The company still uses the “3,000-plus” fleet number today. That may change soon with the introduction of the sixth generation of the autonomous driving system, which will debut in the Zeekr pickup truck, known as the Ojai, and the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

The fairly flat 3,000-fleet figure, coupled with the growth in weekly paid rides, suggests Waymo is pushing harder on each robo-taxi. This usage number is especially important because empty Waymo vehicles driving around in San Francisco or elsewhere aren’t making money and adding to congestion.

This growth comes with challenges. Waymo has received more scrutiny in recent months from the public and regulators. For example, NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the illegal behavior of Waymo robotaxis around school buses. Meanwhile, San Francisco city officials have raised concerns about how the company is handling stranded robotaxis, including Waymo occasionally using police and firefighters to evacuate its vehicles.

Waymo’s ridership numbers still represent a small fraction of Uber’s human-driven ride-hailing business. Uber completed about 13.5 billion trips in 2025, a number that includes completed ride-hailing and delivery trips, according to securities filings. The closest pure ride-hailing number was shared during Uber’s August 2024 earnings call when the company said it completed more than 1 million ride-hailing trips per hour.

In other words, Waymo hasn’t been treading on Uber’s tires yet.

However, with every month, the company’s leadership in the field of robotaxi rides is growing.

A number of companies are vying for a slice of the robotics pie, although many are yet to offer a fully autonomous, fee-based transportation service. There are some Chinese robo-taxi companies, including Pony.ai and WeRide, that charge for robo-taxi rides, but none of them operate in the United States.

Tesla began operating a paid robo-taxi service in Austin in January, and while CEO Elon Musk has said the company is getting closer to a fully self-driving ride-hailing service in California, it lacks any of the permits required to do so. Other companies, including Avride, Hyundai-owned Motional and Zoox, are moving toward paid robotaxi services in various markets by the end of the year.

They all have some catching up to do.