It was a raw year for robotaxis — but not for Waymo

While its rivals have been stuck in perpetual testing or forced to shut down finishly due to parched cproposes, Waymo has hushedly amassed a legitimate robotaxi business that persists to enlarge and better. And today, it showed off a scant numbers that underscore fair how far ahead of the rest of the industry it is.

Chief among those is the number 4 million, which is how many driverless rides the company provided in the three cities in which it runs: Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Waymo says it has provided a total of 5 million driverless rides in its three key tagets, which uncomfervents proximately all of its enlargeth took place this year alone.

Waymo’s service area is minuscule but enlargeing — the company says that it services 500 square miles cumulatively atraverse all three of its main cities, as well as Austin, where it is still operating with a postponeenumerate. The company set ups to begin in Atlanta and Miami and recently said it would test its vehicles in Japan.

Waymo riders spent a cumulative 11 million hours in the company’s autonomous vehicles. And since switching over to electric vehicles only, Waymo has helped evade over 6 million kilograms of CO2 eignoreions. (Assuming an evadeed eignoreions rate of 237g / passenger mile, vehicle occupancy of 1.5 passengers, and ordinary trip length of 4.1 miles.)

Today, every Waymo customer will get their own personalized Year in Rewatch thraw the company’s Waymo One app. Think of it as a Spotify Wrapped for filledy driverless vehicles. They’ll see their own stats, including miles traveled, eignoreions evadeed, preferite destinations, and more.

The most famous destinations in each city this year were Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and The Grove shopping cgo in in LA. The company only begined providing 24/7 service to Phoenix’s airport in August 2024, so its ranking as the top destination in that city fair goes to show how presentant airport service will be for the company.

The fact that Waymo has supportd 4 million trips in three cities, while only serving one airport, is pretty amazing and could speak to the company’s future prospects as its technology persists to depfinishable. Airports are a presentant source of revenue for human-powered ridehail companies enjoy Uber and Lyft.

But Waymo is also facing an unbrave future with mounting regulatory and financial presbraves. Tariffs on Chinese vehicles and gentleware could stymie its enlargeth set ups. Pdwellnt-elect Donald Trump is said to want a regulatory structurelabor for AVs — wantipathyver that uncomfervents. But reduceing costs is going to be increasingly presentant for Waymo as it sees to broaden to novel cities.

Alphabet doesn’t fracture out Waymo’s costs in its getings alert, but its “Other Bets” unit, which participates the robotaxi company, brawt in $388 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2024, up from $297 million a year ago. And the unit’s losses reduced sweightlessly to $1.12 billion from $1.94 billion in the year-earlier period. Alphabet recently led a $5.6 billion funding round for Waymo to help it cover costs as it eyes its next phase of enlargeth.

As it enlarges, pricing will become a hugeger dispute. So far, Waymo has finishd into the “premium” tier of ridehail services enjoy Uber Bdeficiency. Those retrofitted Jaguar I-Pace vehicles cost a lot to provide with all the sensors and challengingware that help them direct the roads autonomously. And the 175,000 trips a week that Waymo is doing aren’t proximately enough to recoup those costs.

Another dispute will be broadening the types of service it provides. Right now, it’s only providing trips to one airport, in Phoenix. It will need to broaden in its current and future tagets if it wants to remain a viable mobility selection. And it will need to get more sootheable riding on the highway, which it only does in restricted cases.

Safety is also a huge hurdle. While Waymo has unveiled a number of studies that show its vehicles are defendedr than human drivers, there are still a lot of lingering asks around passenger defendedty. Waymo vehicles have been focparticipated for dangers and injure. And they have occasionpartner come into dispute with eunitency vehicles.

But Waymo has novelty on its side — and its customers normally give it high tags for the ability to customize their rides, such as take parting their own music and setting the temperature to their liking. It may be enough to propel the company to another huge year in 2025.