SF Examiner – Waymo says its SF fleet has tripled in size since last public disclosure
See original article by Greg Wong at the SF Examiner
Waymo has finally confirmed what many San Franciscans have likely already known for months: There are way more of the company’s robotaxis in The City now than ever before.
And the number will only get bigger.
Waymo has more than 800 vehicles in commercial operation across the Bay Area — an area that includes all of San Francisco and parts of the Peninsula and South Bay — according to August data the company shared Wednesday with The Examiner.
The 800-vehicle figure is by far the largest that Waymo has ever publicly disclosed for its Bay Area fleet — it’s nearly three times larger than any total the company had shared before.
The company told The Examiner in March that there were “over 300 Waymos” in service in The City. That number had not changed much since California regulators first permitted Waymo to charge for rides on Aug. 10, 2023, when officials said there were around 250 Waymo vehicles on the road.
Some officials had questioned the continued accuracy of those figures, considering anecdotal evidence that suggested the vehicles’ presence on The City’s streets had grown significantly in the past two years.
The company’s reluctance to share exactly how many robotaxis are on the road in San Francisco has been one of the main sources of frustration among its many local detractors.
Former San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin told The Examiner in March that Waymo is one of the “most uncooperative, non-transparent, opaque organizations” he had dealt with in his pair of two-term stints on The City’s Board of Supervisors.
But the Google subsidiary’s latest update appears to indicate a shift in how much it’s willing to disclose to media organizations.
The policy change seemingly dates back to May, when Waymo announced in a press release that it was operating more than 1,500 robotaxis nationwide. Although the release didn’t include city-specific figures, Waymo shared data with The Examiner showing it deployed more than 600 robotaxis in the San Francisco area — about 200 less than the current total — at that time.
Despite the abrupt spike in its publicly disclosed totals, the exact timeline of when Waymo’s expansion occurred is unclear. The California Public Utilities Commission has provided more specific data on Waymo’s vehicle-count in both the state and The City, but its metric is different than the company’s.
State regulators track how many total Waymo vehicles there are both statewide and in each region, including cars only used for testing or other noncommercial purposes. Waymo’s statistics purely account for the number of vehicles that can carry paying passengers.
According to the CPUC, Waymo had as of August 1,429 total vehicles in California, and 875 “associated with a terminal in San Francisco.” In March, the CPUC revealed there were 1,087 statewide and 762 in San Francisco. However, it’s unclear how many of those were being deployed to give rides and how many were just test vehicles.
Waymo’s August update also unveiled that it deploys more than 2,000 commercial vehicles in the U.S, up from 1,500 in May. In addition to the 800 in San Francisco, 400 are in Phoenix and 500 are in Los Angeles. The company reported that its cars have driven more than 100 million miles across more than 13 states and provided more than 10 million paid trips through May.
See original article by Greg Wong at the SF Examiner
