Waymo expands Austin service area to 90 square miles, topping Tesla

Alphabet’s Waymo is more than doubling the service area for its driverless ride-hailing service in Austin, outsizing Tesla Inc., which expanded its fledgling service earlier this week.

Waymo said Thursday it now covers 90 square miles in the city, up from 37. Over the weekend, Tesla expanded its service area to 42 square miles, up from the 20 it covered when it launched its robotaxi pilot program on June 22.

"Just months after serving our first Austin riders with Uber, we’re excited to offer our 24/7 service to more of the city," Shweta Shrivastava, Waymo’s senior director of product management said in a statement. "The service with our partners at Uber is healthy, and we are ready for more Austinites to experience the magic of fully autonomous driving."

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The new service area includes Crestview, Windsor Park, Sunset Valley and Franklin Park. It also adds The Domain and McKinney Falls State Park. Its original service area covers downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, and Hyde Park.

Waymo, the industry leader in driverless ride hailing, is growing rapidly but other companies are hustling to catch up. Chief among them: Elon Musk’s Tesla, which rolled out its long-promised robotaxi service last month to a select few influencers in Austin; and Amazon’s Zoox, which recently announced a new Bay Area factory to mass produce its autonomous vehicles.

Waymo launched its service in Austin on March 4 in partnership with Uber. The company says more than 100 Waymo vehicles are operating in the city, with plans to scale to hundreds over time. It said customer satisfaction is high, with Austin riders rating their Waymo trips 4.9 out of 5 on average.

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Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, called the expansion "a major step toward a future of transportation that is increasingly electric and autonomous."

Tesla’s service is still in its early stages — its Model Y-based robotaxis still have a safety operator in the front passenger seat during trips in case of emergencies and is available by invitation only, so not available to the general public. Still, it contributes to the increasing competition among autonomous vehicle providers in Austin, which is one of the few U.S. cities with multiple players in the field.

At least two other companies also are preparing to offer service in the city. Avride, a startup founded in 2017 that was previously part of the self-driving division of Russian company Yandex, is testing its autonomous vehicles in the city and has deployed autonomous delivery robots in a pilot program with H-E-B. Zoox also began testing in the city a year ago. It’s just one of seven cities where the company is testing, and it’s unclear when its service will be available here.

Waymo recently announced it had reached 100 million fully autonomous miles driven without a human behind the wheel, doubling its mileage in just six months. Beyond Austin, the company now operates in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and parts of Silicon Valley.

In January, Waymo announced plans to begin testing in 10 additional cities, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego. Last month, it said was testing in San Antonio, Miami and other cities as it works toward rapid expansion.