California regulators clear Waymo to triple its robotaxi service area
The CPUC approved driverless rides across 18 counties, from Sacramento and San Diego to wine country — but Waymo says the actual rollout will be slow.
What happened: The California Public Utilities Commission approved Waymo's request to massively expand where its driverless cars can pick up paying riders. The new authorization covers 18 counties, more than tripling Waymo's current footprint. It stretches the Bay Area service zone from Brentwood to Sea Ranch in Sonoma, adds Marin, Napa, Orange and Riverside counties, and clears the way for fully driverless commercial rides in Sacramento and San Diego. In Southern California, the eventual zone runs from Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks down to San Diego.
Why it matters: For riders in places with thin rideshare coverage, like parts of wine country where people say they must book a ride hours ahead, this could mean real new options. Waymo also points to its own data showing 94% fewer serious-injury collisions across 220 million-plus autonomous miles. But the approval lands right after a rough stretch: Waymo cars stalled and blocked San Francisco streets on July 4th, the company had to restrict service near a music festival, and one of its vehicles killed a neighborhood cat last year. San Francisco has floated fining AV companies that block emergency vehicles.
How it works, plainly: Waymo's cars use cameras, radar and lidar to drive without a human behind the wheel, and the company is now deploying a new vehicle called the Ojai, which it says is larger and cheaper to build than its earlier retrofitted Jaguars. Regulatory approval doesn't mean instant service everywhere: Waymo still has to test each new environment, from highways and bridges to rural roads with patchy cell connectivity, before turning on driverless rides there.
The rollout: Waymo says its immediate priority is launching rider-only service in San Diego later this summer while it keeps validating its technology in Sacramento, where it has been testing since February. There's no public timeline for when the rest of the newly approved area, including most of the Bay Area's outer counties and Southern California suburbs, will actually get service. Local operators, like a Napa shuttle company, say they've been preparing for the competition for months.