Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana expects the company to hit 1M+ paid weekly robotaxi rides in the US by the end of 2026, up from ~400K per week in six cities now
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s autonomous driving unit, will hit more than 1 million paid weekly robotaxi rides in the US by the end of this year …
Context & Ripple Effects
Waymo’s reported weekly ride volume has climbed from more than 50,000 paid trips a week in 2024 to 200,000-plus by early 2025, before reaching roughly 400,000 across six U.S. cities now. The new end-2026 target extends that established volume-growth arc rather than marking a first commercial launch.
The company had also said it reached 10 million paid trips while not yet profitable, making weekly ride growth a useful indicator of whether its network can gain enough utilization to support the operating model.
First-order effects
- Waymo has set a public operating benchmark of more than 1 million weekly U.S. paid rides by year-end, at least 2.5 times its current roughly 400,000-ride weekly level.
- The target gives Alphabet, Waymo partners, and riders a clearer measure for judging whether service expansion is translating into sustained paid demand rather than isolated market launches.
Second-order effects
- Reaching that volume would require Waymo to expand vehicle availability and keep service reliable across more trips; its existing use of human assistance for exceptions makes operational handling a material scaling constraint.
- The target sharpens the commercial comparison with Tesla’s Austin robotaxi effort, which experts characterize as having fewer vehicles and safety-driver reliance, increasing pressure to demonstrate comparable autonomous throughput.
Third-order effects
- If the growth pattern holds, robotaxis will increasingly be judged on repeatable network utilization and the cost of handling edge cases—not simply on whether driverless rides can operate in a city.
- The sector’s economics will hinge on how much human support remains embedded behind nominally autonomous service as fleets and trip volumes rise.
The trend: Robotaxis are moving from pilot-scale deployment toward a contest over scaling paid ride networks while containing the human operating costs behind autonomy.