After opening limited service earlier this year in Miami, Waymo is now available to anyone who wants to hail its fully autonomous ride-share service through the Waymo app, the company announced today.
Also starting today, Waymo vehicles are not only confined to city streets – they can hop on the highway, too, including I-95, the Dolphin Expressway (836), and the Palmetto Expressway (826), allowing faster rides, whether you are commuting from Coral Gables to Brickell, Wynwood to Miami Beach or Midtown to the Grove. Waymo says that there has been about 100,000 rides taken in Miami since its launch here in January. (Hey, Waymo, when did you take the photo above with this few cars on the highway?)
Waymo currently serves limited service areas in the Magic City, but it is expected to expand. Now it doesn’t serve MIA, for instance, but right now you could take a Waymo north to NW 46th Street and west to and on the Palmetto expressway. It can take you to Miami Beach north to Bal Harbour and you can go as far south as Dadeland, the Miami Herald reported. If you are traveling within the city of Miami, including downtown, Brickell, Wynwood and Edgewater, or Coral Gables, South Miami and swaths of unincorporated Miami-Dade, Waymo probably has you covered.
Can it handle sharing the roads with Miami drivers? Waymo says it has been involved in 92% fewer crashes that cause serious or fatal injuries than human drivers in the same conditions. The company also says its technology was built to handle sudden tropical downpours, but that never happens in Miami, right?
Of course, Waymo, owned by Alphabet, is not the only robotaxi service eyeing the South Florida market. Zoox, owned by Amazon, announced its plans last month to begin testing its purpose-built robotaxis with riders in Miami and Austin, as well as expanding service in San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Uber recently announced that it has partnered with electric car maker Rivian Automotive to deploy robotaxis in Miami and San Francisco in 2028. And last November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said to expect Tesla robotaxis to arrive first in five cities, including Miami, without revealing a timeline.
Waymo announced it is also opening up full service in Orlando too, but is currently not going to the theme parks.
“Our progress in Miami and Orlando is a testament to our system’s ability to scale, bringing the future of mobility to more people across more places,” said the company’s announcement.
Waymo rides are already available across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Austin and Atlanta.
This story was originally published by Refresh Miami, a WLRN News partner. Refresh Miami is the oldest and largest tech and startup community in Miami with over 16,000 members.
