SAN BRUNO, California — Waymo has announced that its fully driverless taxis will soon begin carrying passengers along freeways in Los Angeles, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area — marking one of the most significant steps yet for the autonomous vehicle industry.
Until now, the company has restricted its robotaxis to city streets, citing the heightened complexity and risk of operating at higher speeds. After years of development, Waymo says it now considers the technology ready for motorway use.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov. “Freeway driving is simple to learn but difficult to master when you’re talking about full autonomy at scale.”
According to a company spokesperson, Waymo appears to be the first in the U.S. to offer fully autonomous, rider-only freeway trips to paying customers — with no safety operator behind the wheel.
Experts say freeway driving presents a trade-off: fewer pedestrians and unpredictable obstacles, but much greater risk due to speed. “To anticipate what might happen 10 seconds later, the car has to see much farther ahead,” said Wendy Ju, associate professor at Cornell University. She said she is “guardedly optimistic” about Waymo’s safety performance.
In a 40-minute test ride with NBC News, a Waymo vehicle navigated Northern California freeways seamlessly — merging, exiting, keeping distance and avoiding a human driver attempting an illegal lane change.
Competition Accelerates
The expanded capabilities come as rivals rush to scale their own robotaxi services. Tesla has begun offering supervised self-driving rides in Austin and the Bay Area, while Amazon-owned Zoox is testing a fixed-route service in Las Vegas. Several Chinese tech companies are moving quickly, too.
Waymo is simultaneously preparing a major expansion of its operating network, planning to more than double the number of cities it serves and enter colder-weather markets such as Denver and Detroit. The company will also introduce curbside pickup at San Jose airport and add a new vehicle — the Zeekr RT — to its growing fleet.
Balancing Innovation and Safety
Despite progress, safety concerns remain central to the industry. Cruise, GM’s former robotaxi division, lost its California operating permit last year after a high-profile crash in San Francisco in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet. Waymo cars have also been targeted in acts of vandalism, and one recently struck and killed a cat.
Waymo, however, notes that it has recorded over 100 million driverless miles without a human fatality.
Srikanth Saripalli of Texas A&M University said the technology is now comparable to human ability but must prove itself beyond the sun-soaked streets of California and Arizona. “They’ve been very selective about cities,” he noted. “And even then, it took them nearly a decade to reach the freeway.”
Around 18% of U.S. traffic deaths occur on freeways, making them some of America’s deadliest roads.
Waymo says it has invested heavily in mastering highway hazards — aggressive merges, construction, hydroplaning and high-speed collisions among them. Freeway rides have been quietly tested with employees and guests for over a year and will be rolled out gradually to customers.
As with urban routes, the robotaxis will strictly follow posted speed limits. “If the limit is 65mph, that’s the maximum,” said Waymo product manager Jacopo Sannazzaro.
A Crucial Step for Daily Travel
In cities such as Los Angeles and Phoenix, where freeway driving is often unavoidable for even short trips, the new capability will sharply reduce journey times — a major advantage over surface-street-only services.
Though some regulators fear that robotaxis could worsen congestion, Waymo disputes the claim. “We have not seen any increase in traffic in the areas where we operate,” said product manager Pablo Abad.
The move brings autonomous mobility closer to mainstream use, though the industry remains under tight scrutiny as it enters one of the most challenging environments on American roads: the freeway.
