Waymo opens robotaxi service in Las Vegas

Waymo has begun to open up its robotaxi service to the public in Las Vegas, just a few weeks after receiving final approval from Nevada transportation regulators.

The Alphabet-owned company said Monday it will invite public riders on a rolling basis, following a robotaxi launch playbook it has followed in 14 other cities.

Waymo is starting with “dozens” of its new Ojai minivan robotaxis, which will serve an area of Las Vegas that includes the Strip south of Highway 589 and into Boulder Junction, according to a spokesperson. Waymo’s fleet and service area will eventually scale. For now, members of the public will have to request an invite and hope to receive an access code. Typically, Waymo opens the service up to everyone within a month or two of its official launch.

The announcement follows a busy few weeks for Waymo as it tries to ramp up its operations across the United States and Europe as Tesla, Zoox, and other competitors attempt to close on its lead. Earlier this month, the company began offering its robotaxis to invited members of the public in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa.

Las Vegas, where competitors Tesla, Zoox, and Motional are also planning to launch commercial robotaxi services, is Waymo’s 15th market. Waymo also operates in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company launched, and then paused service, in San Antonio.

Waymo’s entry into Las Vegas follows approval by the Nevada Transportation Authority to operate commercial robotaxi services in Clark County, home to Las Vegas. Tesla and Uber also received approval from the agency.

Waymo has been authorized to operate up to 1,000 autonomous vehicles over the next year, while Tesla is allowed to deploy up to 5,000, and Uber up to 1,000 robotaxis, which it will operate through partnerships with Hyundai subsidiary Motional and Zoox. Together, these permits would deploy up to 8,000 robotaxis across the county over the next 12 months.

It’s unlikely that the three companies will reach those numbers. Today, Waymo has a fleet of more than 4,000 robotaxis, which are spread across more than a dozen cities. Tesla’s Cybercab chief engineer Eric Early told state regulators, during a meeting in August, that he didn’t think the company would be “extremely happy and satisfied if we could get ourselves up to 2,500, maybe a bit higher than that in the next year.”

Even without reaching those figures, the city could be saturated with robotaxis in the next year.

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Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.

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