Waymo Operates 800+ Vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It had been suspected for some time, but now it’s official. Waymo operates far more than the few hundred cars in the San Francisco Bay Area that the company had reported until recently. In March, the company said in response to an inquiry that 300 vehicles were in operation in the San Francisco Bay Area. But these figures were obviously incorrect, as local residents could easily see. The density of Waymo robotaxis in San Francisco and the Bay Area is so high that there had to be far more vehicles.

One indicator for me was simply the size of the four to five Waymo depots in San Francisco. Whenever I drove past, there were always at least a hundred vehicles there (see video). If the other, smaller depots also have another hundred vehicles on site at any given time for maintenance and charging, that alone adds up to 200. Given the large number of Waymos on every street corner in San Francisco, I always estimated the number to be at least 600, if not more.

At the request of the San Francisco Examiner, Waymo has now provided the following vehicle figures:

• San Francisco: & Bay Area: 800 vehicles
• Los Angeles: 500 vehicles
• Phoenix: 400 vehicles

Waymo currently operates a total of 2,000 vehicles across the US (in May, the figure was around 1,500), which are probably still spread across Atlanta and Austin, with a handful undertaking test drives in New York, Washington D.C., and Dallas.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which is responsible for taxi licenses, among other things, reported in August that Waymo had 1,429 vehicles, 875 of which were for its San Francisco depots. In March, these figures were 1,087 for California, 762 of which were for San Francisco.

This article was also published in German.