Waymo received approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its autonomous robotaxi service to 18 counties, in what the company says is its largest geographic expansion of the service to date. The approval covers areas extending from Sonoma County in the north to San Diego in the south, and allows the company to charge for trips conducted without a human driver throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles area.
The approval also paves the way for Waymo to launch two new markets in Sacramento and San Diego. The company announced the decision on X, confirming that the expansion will be implemented gradually and guided by its own safety framework.
Scope of the Regulatory Approval
The approval comes under Advice Letter No. 4, which Waymo submitted to the commission on January 28. The commission had suspended consideration of the request until September 25 for additional review, before the company submitted a supplemental letter in May addressing the transportation of unaccompanied minors and passenger procedures during service disruptions, such as the power outage that affected San Francisco last December.
The approval covers 12 counties in Northern California and six counties in Southern California:
- North: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo.
- South: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura.
The operating conditions requested by Waymo cover all speed limits, highways and public roads, city streets, rural roads, parking lots, carpool lanes and railroad crossings. They also permit operation during the day and at night, and in rain, fog and cold weather, with one key exception concerning conditions involving widespread snow or ice.
The approval covers Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, as well as the new Ojai robotaxi, which uses the sixth generation of Waymo’s driving system.
Waymo’s Expansion Compared with Tesla’s Service
Waymo’s service area had exceeded 1,400 square miles across 11 cities in May, with a fleet of approximately 3,000 vehicles that had completed more than 20 million trips. The company is targeting one million trips per week by the end of the year.
This comes as Tesla operates a service called “Robotaxi” in the San Francisco Bay Area, but with a person in the driver’s seat. The article quoted Pat Tseng, the California Public Utilities Commission’s deputy executive director, as saying in March that Tesla “does not operate an autonomous vehicle service.” According to the article, Tesla’s permit is a charter-party carrier permit, the type used by limousine companies, and does not include the autonomous-vehicle safety reporting, data-transparency or quarterly-reporting requirements imposed on Waymo and Zoox.
Approval Does Not Mean Immediate Launch
The regulatory approval does not mean that the expansion is complete or that the service will begin in all areas at once. Waymo indicated that the rollout would be gradual, requiring warehouses, charging stations, maps, remote-support systems and vehicles to be prepared before actual operations begin.
The article’s author believes that the relatively slow regulatory process reflects a more cautious approach: Waymo submitted its request in January, dealt with the suspension period and objections, then added information in May before receiving approval. The author also noted that the company may have room to accelerate implementation, following reports of approximately 1,000 new Ojai vehicles in Arizona, but stressed that speed should remain tied to what safety considerations allow.