Waymo's Five-City Blitz Puts Pressure on Tesla's Robotaxi Dreams

Waymo just dropped a power move: launching fully autonomous operations in Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. By next year, they’ll have riders in 10 cities total—and they’ve already clocked over 10 million driverless trips.

Meanwhile, Tesla? Still running ~30 robotaxis in Austin with a safety monitor in the driver’s seat. The plan is to go full driverless by year-end, but let’s be real—Waymo eliminated their safety monitor back in 2020.

Here’s the gap: When Tesla finally enters Phoenix next year, Waymo will already be cruising with 400+ autonomous vehicles in that city.

The silver lining for Tesla bulls: They’ve got 2 trillion+ vehicles on the road and can scale production fast. Their camera-based system is also cheaper than competitors’ LiDAR setups.

But here’s the thing—Tesla’s valuation is getting spicy (P/E near 300x), and the robotaxi future isn’t guaranteed. Regulations are tightening, lawsuits are piling up, and safety questions remain. Elon’s compensation package hinges on 1 million robotaxis operational, 1 million Optimus robots, and 10 million Full Self-Driving subs. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? That’s the $1 trillion question.