Waymo starts autonomous testing in Philadelphia

Waymo is expanding its robotaxi footprint once again, adding four more U.S. cities to its growing list of deployment locations. The company announced on Wednesday that it has begun autonomous vehicle testing — with a safety driver on board — in Philadelphia, while also starting manual data collection drives in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh.

The Alphabet-owned company did not share a timeline for launching commercial robotaxi services in these new markets, nor did it confirm whether it intends to partner with local operators. In other cities, such as Atlanta and Austin, Waymo has paired with Uber to accelerate its commercial rollout.

These additions expand Waymo’s map to more than 20 U.S. cities where it is either already providing rides, preparing for commercial deployment, or conducting active testing. Waymo is now running robotaxi rides on freeways in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and the company says it is on track to scale up to one million autonomous rides per week by the end of 2026.

Waymo also continues to claim that its driverless technology operates at a safety level “five times safer than human drivers,” based on internal data the company shared recently.

However, the rapid expansion has not been without problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating how Waymo’s vehicles behave around school buses, following a widely circulated video showing a Waymo car passing a stopped school bus in Atlanta last September.

This week, Austin news outlet KXAN released a report showing that Waymo vehicles were observed passing school buses while loading or unloading children — even after Waymo said it had deployed software updates intended to fix that behaviour.