Tekedra Mawakana | All-In Summit 2024

Waymo says it has crossed 100,000 paid rides a week, about 2 million paid rides overall, and 22 million fully autonomous miles. Its June safety data showed 83% fewer airbag deployments and roughly 73–74% fewer injury-causing crashes than comparable human driving in the same areas.

Waymo deliberately rejected supervised autonomy because it concluded humans cannot be trusted to stay attentive while automation drives. In 2015–17 employee tests, riders repeatedly disengaged despite takeover warnings; Waymo therefore targets Level 4+, requiring no fallback driver, and uses lidar, radar and cameras.

Waymo trains first in dense urban environments because complexity produces more useful learning than repetitive highway miles. Its expansion is cumulative: Phoenix and Los Angeles build experience, San Francisco informs harder markets such as Manhattan or Washington, while highways are tested separately before broad deployment.

Waymo’s strategy is to become the autonomous “driver,” not a vertically integrated carmaker or fleet operator. It partners with Uber and expects automakers, networks and fleet operators to specialize around it; long term, Waymo says its technology could appear in cars sold on showroom floors and placed into outside fleets.

Waymo says San Francisco usage is already shifting from novelty to routine transportation. A recent UX study found about one-third of riders used it for doctor appointments and 36% for trips to local businesses, signals the company uses to judge whether autonomous rides are becoming part of ordinary life.

Waymo wants autonomous-vehicle operators required to prove a safety case before deployment, partly because one weak entrant could damage the entire industry. It also works with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety Council to make the case that imperfect-but-safer autonomy can still produce major public-health gains.

Cruise’s San Francisco incident and subsequent transparency controversy increased regulatory scrutiny for Waymo as well. Waymo’s co-CEO said the company responded with more engagement and data disclosure, while arguing that credibility depends on transparency rather than pretending autonomous technology will be perfect.

Weather remains a real boundary, but not a blanket one: Waymo says it can operate through heavy rain, flooding, fog and Phoenix sandstorms. It has tested across 25 cities, yet still has no commercial deployment in snow and ice, where the system remains in a learning phase.