Waymo serves 15 U.S. cities with about 80% of its fleet in two states

Waymo serves 15 U.S. cities with about 80% of its fleet in two states

3 min read•Sep 26, 2026•
Takeshi Yamamoto
Takeshi Yamamoto

Waymo now offers robotaxi service in 15 U.S. cities, with about 80% of its roughly 4,000 robotaxis in California and Texas, as first reported by TechCrunch. The broad service footprint is paired with a fleet concentrated in two states while Waymo’s Texas fleet grew by 49% in the past three weeks.

In September 2024, Waymo operated in just three cities: Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Waymo now averages 500,000 paid robotaxi rides each week.

The numbers describe broad service coverage alongside concentrated fleet placement. About 80% of roughly 4,000 robotaxis are in California and Texas. The other 800 or so vehicles are spread across cities in other states, including Arizona and Florida.

Waymo’s Texas fleet grew by 49% in the past three weeks. State vehicle registrations and data from the Texas Autonomous Vehicle Fleet Tracker show that Waymo had 1,102 autonomous vehicles registered in Texas as of September 24.

Waymo first launched commercial service in Austin through a partnership with Uber in March 2025, letting riders hail its robotaxis through the Uber app. Since then, the company has expanded its robotaxi services to Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

For most of the summer, Waymo’s Texas fleet rose from about 600 vehicles in June to more than 700 by the end of August. In September, the fleet surged, driven by an influx of Ojai minivans that now make up about a third of Waymo’s Texas fleet.

The Ojai is a modified Zeekr RT built on Zeekr’s SEA-M platform. It comes with Waymo’s sixth-generation self-driving system, an upgraded rider interface and Google’s Gemini AI, which acts as an in-car assistant for riders.

Base Zeekr vehicles are shipped to the U.S. without any Chinese connected-car technology on board. They are then sent to Waymo’s Arizona factory, where they are outfitted with Waymo’s self-driving system.

The Ojai is supposed to drive down costs and ultimately help Waymo reach profitability, but tariffs are cutting any savings. Under current U.S. trade policy, vehicles built in China face steep import tariffs, raising Waymo’s costs for every Ojai it brings into the country.

Waymo appears willing to absorb that cost. MoffettNathanson, a New York-based research firm that tracks Ojai imports using detailed shipping records, said in its September report that Waymo is on track to bring 5,100 of the vehicles into the U.S. by the end of the year.

Texas is on the list for those Ojai vehicles. Florida, where Waymo operates in three cities, and newer markets such as Las Vegas will likely see an influx as well.

Arizona appeals court vacates manslaughter sentence after AI video

An Arizona appeals court vacated the 10.5-year sentence of Gabriel Horcasitas while upholding his manslaughter conviction, first reported by Nytimes. The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for resentencing without the video, after judges found that it presented scripted statements as if the victim himself were speaking in court.

The three-judge panel said the video generated a likeness of Christopher Pelkey’s voice and appearance but did not reflect actual events. It found that allowing and relying on the video made the sentencing fundamentally unfair, and noted that no prior Arizona case had addressed the admissibility of such a depiction at sentencing.

The judges said a victim’s right to speak cannot override a defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate, reliable information. They said the video collapsed the distinction between the family’s belief about what Pelkey would have said and Pelkey’s own voice and opinions.

The ruling distinguishes family members speaking about Pelkey from a generated likeness that appeared to speak for him.

Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, presented the video during Horcasitas’s sentencing alongside victim-impact statements from family and friends. Wales wrote the script and said her husband and the couple’s longtime business partner helped create the video using Pelkey’s voice from a YouTube video and his face and torso from a funeral-service poster.

Judge Todd F. Lang praised the video as genuine, then imposed the maximum sentence of 10.5 years, more than the nine years prosecutors had sought.

Wales said nobody intended to make the court believe Pelkey was alive or that he had recorded the video before his death. She said she disagreed with the ruling and argued that families use slide shows, collages, hypothetical conversations and poetry to convey grief.

Wales compared the AI video with photography, saying it took 15 years of landmark cases around the 1860s before photography was widely accepted in courts.

The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing without the AI-generated video.