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Waymo’s Robotaxi Program: Progress and Potential

Figure 2: Waymo’s VMT numbers took off after 2015.

to 2018. There is less data on driverless mileage growth. Figure 2 is a any other company. The latest data, released in December 2024, shows
summary of public data and an estimate through 2024 for self-driving that cumulative rider-only miles had surpassed 50 million. The report
and driverless VMT. Waymo started self-driving trials in 2009, and it also provides data on robotaxi crash rates compared with crashes
took six years to reach the first million miles, in June 2015. The pace involving human drivers in Phoenix and San Francisco, and the data is
picked up considerably in 2016. Waymo logged 4 million miles by encouraging.
November 2017 and reached 10 million miles less than a year later, in This article section analyzes known public data from Waymo to
October 2018. Most of the VMT were in California and Arizona, but project Waymo’s driverless miles, number of rides, robotaxi revenue,
Waymo tested in four other states, with trials in Atlanta; Detroit; and other data for the next three years.
Austin, Texas; and Kirkwood, Washington. Table 1 summarizes Waymo’s public data on cumulative auton-
Waymo’s Early Rider program in Phoenix was a key mileage growth omous VMT. There are six datasets, starting in December 2022 and
driver. By the end of the first year, in June 2018, Waymo was driving ending in December 2024. The data includes cumulative miles by
24,000 miles per day, translating to a yearly run rate of more than city, with the number of cities increasing from two to four in the last
8 million miles. The Phoenix Early Rider program was the main factor dataset.
in Waymo’s VMT growth. Waymo has also released data on weekly paid rides over six time
In October 2020, Waymo started rider-only, or robotaxi, deployment periods, as shown in Table 2. The first data point was released in
in Phoenix with paid customers, and the rider-only service became the May 2023 and reported 10,000 rides per week. The latest data point,
main category for AV VMT growth. Self-driving and driverless miles released on April 24, 2025, reported 250,000 rides per week, a
continued to rise in Waymo’s new testing cities. twenty-fivefold increase in weekly ridership in less than two years.
Waymo provided an extra data point for October 2024 showing that
WAYMO’S RIDER-ONLY PUBLIC DATA weekly VMT had reached the 1 million mark, with weekly ridership at
Waymo has provided more data on its robotaxi service expansion than 150,000 rides. Those numbers suggest an average of 6.67 miles per ride,

Table 1: Waymo Rider-Only Public Data: Cumulative VMT (in thousands of miles)

Cities December 2022 July 2023 October 2023 March 2024 June 2024 December 2024
Los Angeles — — — 60 855 5,165
San Francisco 97 1,030 1,190 3,830 5,931 16,032

Phoenix 903 2,480 5,950 10,920 15,399 28,331
Austin — — — — 14 555
All cities 1,000 3,870 7,140 14,810 22,199 50,083
(Source: Various Waymo public documents; Data compilation: Egil Juliussen, March 2025)

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