Waymo Surges to 10 Million Paid Rides, Tesla Has Zero

Hello Elon Musk, you are now 10 million rides behind Waymo.

It’s Waymo’s World

Please consider the Wall Street Journal, It’s Waymo’s World. We’re All Just Riding in It.

Unless you live in one of the few cities where you can hail a ride from Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet GOOGL, it’s almost impossible to appreciate just how quickly their streets have been invaded by autonomous vehicles.

Waymo was doing 10,000 paid rides a week in August 2023. By May 2024, that number of trips in cars without a driver was up to 50,000. In August, it hit 100,000. Now it’s already more than 250,000.

This is not just because Waymo is expanding into new markets. It’s because of the way existing markets have come to embrace self-driving cars.

In California, the most recent batch of quarterly data reported by the company was the most encouraging yet. It showed that Waymo’s number of paid rides inched higher by roughly 2% in both January and February—and then increased 27% in March.

The numbers also showed that Waymo’s cars are self-driving toward an inflection point: They were novel—and now they’re becoming normal.

This is a crucial phase of the classic diffusion curve that explains how people adopt new technology. From the Model T to ChatGPT, there is a long history of magical products that come along and follow a similar path to success.

At first, these innovations appeal to a niche market of tech geeks and early adopters. Only then do some of those products become part of everyday life. It tends to happen gradually, then suddenly, so it can be hard to recognize those breakthroughs in real time.

But if you study the Waymo data, you can see that curve taking shape. 

It cracked a million total paid rides in late 2023. By the end of 2024, it reached five million. We’re not even halfway through 2025 and it has already crossed a cumulative 10 million. At this rate, Waymo is on track to double again and blow past 20 million fully autonomous trips by the end of the year.

In the coming weeks, Tesla is planning to unveil the robotaxi service that Elon Musk has long promised. Waymo has the first-mover advantage, but the company is not profitable and it has burned through billions of dollars to make the surreal dream of self-driving cars a reality. The world’s richest man is betting that he has a less expensive strategy to help Tesla catch up.

But the longer that Waymo has the only driverless cars on the road, the bigger its lead gets.

It’s becoming more popular in the places that it has already conquered even as it pushes into new cities. Earlier this year, it entered Austin, Texas, through a partnership with Uber. This summer, it’s planning to launch in Atlanta. Next on the list are Miami and Washington, D.C. The cars are now mapping Boston, Nashville, New Orleans, Dallas, Las Vegas and San Diego. This past week, the company announced that it’s testing Orlando, Houston and San Antonio. Waymos have even crossed the ocean to begin collecting data in Tokyo.

The success of robotaxis will ultimately depend on this sort of change in human behavior—and the latest data indicates the shift is already under way.

“This isn’t science fiction,” Mawakana recently told CNBC. “It’s not the future. It’s happening now.” 

In the Waymo-crazy Bay Area, people are eager to be ferried by self-driving cars to the airport. If they fly to Phoenix, they can already get picked up by a Waymo and dropped off curbside for their flight back. The company has finished mapping San Francisco International Airport but hasn’t given a timeline for Waymos operating there.

The company now has a safety record over more than 50 million driverless miles—the equivalent of driving across America roughly 20,000 times.

Six years ago, Musk tantalized investors and consumers with his prediction that robotaxis were just a year away. Now it might be a matter of days. His company is planning a June launch of its own ride-hailing service in Austin, where empty Teslas could soon find themselves at traffic lights next to driverless Waymos.

Competition is Good

Elon Musk has been promising Full Self Driving (FSD) for decades. He is now 10 million rides behind.

Waymo has far superior technology. Anyone who disagrees is a fool or a liar. However, Musk is correct, Waymo is losing money on these rides.

For now, Waymo’s technology is far more expensive. But will that price differential be significant 10 years from now? 5? 3?

Waymo has a proven safety record. Tesla has nothing. And we still have serious doubts about Tesla in rain, snow, dust storms etc.

Finally, competition in EVs is heating up. Without FSD that works in all conditions Tesla has nothing.

What Happened to Self-Driving Trucks?

I thought self-driving trucks would happen first because point-to-point interstate driving is conceptually simple, and city driving is far more complex.

I was wrong about trucks. But self-driving in general is right on schedule.

Robo-Taxis have arrived. And as expected, without Musk.

My expectation now is trucks will not lag by much and will explode faster when it does happen. There is too much of a cost advantage to eliminating truck drivers for this not to happen. The starting point for trucks will still be interstate.