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Waymo driverless ride-hailing service is coming to Motown
Posted by Talbot Payne on November 3, 2025
Robot cars are coming to Detroit streets.
Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, said Monday that its self-driving fleet is headed to the Motor City. The electric autonomous ride-hailing service has become a fixture in cities like Phoenix and San Francisco, where hundreds of vehicles — instantly recognized by their rooftop Lidar arrays — service hundreds of thousands of customers with no driver behind the robotaxis’ spinning steering wheel.
A Waymo One Jaguar iPace in San Francisco. The self-driving company is bringing its robotaxis to Detroit, which will be its first northern market. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Recently, the service expanded to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Austin — and now it is expanding again with service in Detroit, plus San Diego and Las Vegas. Detroit is significant because it’s Waymo’s first northern market. Waymo said the service is targeted to operate 365 days a year through rain, sleet and snow.
The service is also notable because it uses Zeekr minivans, the first Chinese electric auto brand on U.S. streets. At its inception in Phoenix, Waymo used Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which have been phased out over time.
“Starting next week, you’ll see us manually driving around the city as we familiarize ourselves with Detroit’s historic streets before moving to autonomous operations,” Waymo said in a press release. “We’ll arrive with a mixed fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles with the 5th-gen Waymo Driver and Zeekr RT vehicles equipped with our 6th-gen Waymo Driver, which will be key to driving in winter weather.”
The Waymo One Jaguar iPace allows riders in any seat but the driver seat. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Waymos are hailed by an app similar to Uber and Lyft. Waymo is the most-used robot service in the United States and is in fierce competition with Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla Inc. robotaxis to bring driver-free ride-hailing services to U.S. customers. The latter service, which recently started testing in Austin, Texas, with human monitors on board, aims to be more affordable than Waymo by eschewing expensive Lidar arrays and navigating solely by cameras.
Waymo said that it is coordinating closely with local officials, including the Michigan Department of Transportation and the city of Detroit, as it begins its step-by-step testing approach in the Motor City. Neither MDOT nor the city offered comments ahead of the Monday announcement.
“We’re proud of our roots in Metro Detroit, including in Novi, where we’ve had an engineering team for many years,” the company statement said. Waymo’s Novi office employs several dozen engineers, technicians and test drivers.
The company has prepared for its Detroit rollout through launches in other cities, closed-track testing and forays into areas like the Upper Peninsula with snowy winter conditions. A recent Waymo blog post discussed efforts to create an “all-weather Driver.”
The first phase of the Detroit rollout will feature human drivers manually operating the vehicles to collect a highly detailed, high-definition map of the city, Waymo technical program manager Jake Tretter said in an interview.
Once that phase is complete, the vehicles will roam the streets — supervised — using their autonomous technology while a human operator sits in the driver’s seat to make sure performance is safe and smooth.
The company did not provide a timetable for when testing phases would end and the public would be able to hail self-driving rides from the Waymo app.
“Our goal is to do it as soon as possible,” Tretter said. But he also stressed the importance of building “trust and understanding” so Detroiters are ready for an eventual full launch in the city.
“It’s harder to lose the trust and try to regain that than it is to slowly build that trust and make sure that we’re working in unison with the community and policy and legislators,” he added.
The Detroit expansion will “first and foremost” focus on the city’s urban core near Comerica Park, Ford Field and Little Caesars Arena before expanding out slowly from there.
Waymo began operating as a service open to the public in Phoenix in October 2020. Since its introduction in San Francisco in 2023, it has become a tourist sensation as well as ferrying locals on their daily rounds. Waymo has been validated over 100 million fully autonomous miles and 10 million-plus trips.
In May of this year, Waymo released a study saying that over 56.7 million miles, its vehicles had 92% fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians and 82% fewer crashes with injuries to cyclists compared to human drivers. The company’s latest data show similar rates across 96 million miles.
Still, its robotaxis have faced scrutiny from safety regulators, including a 14-month probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into more than a dozen minor crashes in which Waymo vehicles ran into parked cars and other stationary objects. Waymo recalled 1,200 vehicles, leading NHTSA to close the inquiry, Reuters reported.
A Waymo One Jaguar iPace hustles to pick up a customer in San Francisco. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
In addition to eventually opening its service to the public in Detroit, Waymo is partnering with organizations like the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan.
“For many people living with epilepsy, transportation is a significant barrier. The Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan celebrates organizations like Waymo, which are leading the way in providing accessible and safe transportation solutions,” said Andrea Schotthoefer, the foundation’s president. “Their efforts show what’s possible and inspire collective action toward a future where transportation barriers no longer stand in the way of opportunity and inclusion.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.