The subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Waymo, is an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California.
This company has the Waymo Driver, the actual autonomous technology that gives its passengers a brand-new kind of freedom, to go where they want and when they want. It is like Uber or Lyft, but way safer than they are. Interesting.
Via the Waymo Driver, all the data is utilized to calculate a safe route with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, letting the car respond in real-time to the changing traffic environment.
In other words, with this Waymo Driver, you can capture driving data used to continually improve the service’s performance. Fair enough.
Reports by the business community are saying how Waymo has increased rapidly in ridership since its launch to the California public in 2022. This only goes to show how humans are entrusting their lives on the road to robot drivers or autonomous cars.
The California Public Utilities Commission accounted for March 2022, when Waymo provided over 3,700 rides. During that time, Waymo was limited to staff or pre-approved riders in San Francisco. Later, the company opened a waitlist, allowing just a few members of the public to sign up for rides.
In November 2024, the company further expanded to Los Angeles, as well as the rest of the other parts in the San Francisco Bay Area in March 2025, increasing the number of rides to around over 708,000 in the state. That’s huge!
Then, in less than two years, the number of Waymo riders increased by over a whopping 5,500 percent, which equates to over five million rides in only three years.
The implication of this is that Waymo doubled its ridership in only less than half a year.
The company isn’t in full denial over these figures. In fact, the more they should be proud, you know. Waymo stated recently that it is operating 1,500 robotaxis and plans to add 2,000 more by next year. However, there was no official statement released by Waymo regarding the matter.
Ridesharing Forum will follow every inch of this story. For more information, sign up for your account today.