Waymo Approved for Robotaxis in 18 California Counties
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- California Public Utilities Commission approved Waymo's Advice Letter No. 4, filed January 28, greenlighting fully driverless paid rides across 18 counties — a roughly seven-month process that included a suspension through September 25 and a May supplemental filing covering unaccompanied minors and service-disruption procedures
- The approved footprint spans 12 Northern California counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, Yolo) and six Southern counties (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura), covering most of the state's population and including brand-new markets Sacramento and San Diego
- Waymo won broad operating conditions covering all speed limits, freeways, highways, rural roads, parking lots, driveways, and rail crossings in day and night, rain, fog, and hail — with snow or ice as the only carve-out — for both the Jaguar I-Pace and the new Ojai vehicle running Waymo's sixth-generation Driver system
- Waymo's active service area already exceeded 1,400 square miles across 11 cities in May on a fleet of roughly 3,000 vehicles that has completed more than 20 million trips; the company is targeting 1 million rides per week by year's end and has roughly 1,000 new Ojai vehicles staged in Arizona ready for deployment
- Tesla, by contrast, runs its "Robotaxi" service in the same Bay Area with a human safety driver under a charter-party carrier permit — the same permit a limousine company holds — which carries no autonomous-vehicle safety reporting or quarterly data filings; CPUC deputy executive director Pat Tsen said in March that "Tesla is not operating an autonomous vehicle service"
Why it matters: Waymo now has explicit legal permission to charge for fully driverless rides across most of California's population while Tesla's Bay Area robotaxi still requires a human driver under a charter-party permit — a regulatory gap the CPUC named in March. With 20 million trips already logged, 3,000 vehicles deployed, and ~1,000 new Ojai units staged in Arizona, Waymo's real-world lead over Tesla is widening on the regulatory axis as well as the operational one.
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