The end of taxi driving: Google’s robotaxi project surpasses Tesla, reaching 10 million bookings, making Elon Musk angry, the ride-hailing industry is about to have a ‘storm’

With installation and operating costs gradually decreasing, digital maps and AI algorithms becoming more and more perfect, it won’t take many years for robotaxis to become the default choice for many people instead of traditional taxis.

Beneath the seemingly calm surface, a quiet revolution is taking place on the streets of major American cities: Waymo’s self-driving taxis or robotaxes.

Few people expected that the important numbers revealing the rapid growth of this industry were published in a very “secret” way on the website of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

Every quarter, the CPUC publishes spreadsheets listing the number of completed autonomous trips and passengers in the state. In the most recent update, a glimpse of Waymo was enough to make any tech-savvy person cringe.

Waymo robotaxi trips in California

From strange to normal

In August 2023, Waymo was averaging 10,000 paid autonomous rides per week in areas where it was allowed to operate. But less than a year later, in May 2024, that number jumped to 50,000 rides per week.

By August 2024, Waymo will reach 100,000 trips per week, and by early summer 2025, their robotaxis will have rolled out more than 250,000 trips per week.

From 1 million cumulative trips by the end of 2023, Waymo will five times that number by the end of 2024 (5 million trips), then continue to break out, reaching more than 10 million trips by the first half of 2025.

These numbers show a clear trend: self-driving cars, which initially attracted only early adopters, are now spreading rapidly to the general public.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) commented that Waymo’s robots are following the diffusion curve, which describes a new product/service that is accepted from a small testing phase, gradually spreads to the general user group and finally becomes “normal”.

This happened with ChatGPT when AI chatbots were still new and then turned into a common skill that became widely available.

Waymo is now on that same trajectory.

First-quarter 2025 data shows that after slowing slightly in January and February (growing by only about 2% each month), Waymo’s paid self-driving trips suddenly jumped 27% in March.

Currently, Waymo only officially provides services in certain cities: Phoenix (Arizona), Los Angeles (California) and San Francisco (California).

In these places, many people consider robotaxi as a true “sightseeing spot”: the strange feeling of sitting in a driverless car, looking at the steering wheel that doesn’t move at all, makes it hard for them to contain their curiosity.

However, that curiosity quickly gave way to trust and gradually became a daily habit.

Compared to traditional services like Uber or Lyft, Waymo’s fares aren’t the cheapest. However, since there’s no need to tip the driver and no need to “interact” with the rider, the final fares between the apps are usually pretty neutral.

Not to mention, Waymo is constantly increasing the number of vehicles, shortening waiting times, and expanding service areas (both in San Francisco and some areas of Silicon Valley) to serve customers.

So safe that Elon Musk is angry

One key point that allows Waymo to confidently accelerate strongly is its “huge” safety record after tens of millions of miles (1 mile = 1.6 km) of testing.

By early 2025, Waymo will have accumulated more than 50 million driverless miles (equivalent to traveling around the United States about 20,000 times).

While the US has millions of traffic accidents every year, killing hundreds of people every day, Waymo has almost never had a serious incident due to system failure.

Still, the company has stressed that just “one bad accident” could overturn consumer confidence and stymie the self-driving car industry as a whole.

The journey from the start of a group of Stanford students and lecturers building the robot “Stanley” and winning the Darpa Grand Challenge in 2005, to Google revealing its self-driving car project (2010), and then Waymo independently separating into a subsidiary of Alphabet, are all persistent but challenging steps.

In 2015, Waymo (then an internal Google project) announced the first fully autonomous ride on public roads without a human in the driver’s seat. By 2018, the company launched its “Early Rider Program” in Phoenix, and by 2020, it officially launched its first paid robotaxi service for the public.

“Waymo’s growth is a direct result of the cumulative progress we’ve made over the years, across every piece of engineering, mapping, sensors, and human feedback,” says Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana.

Despite being ahead in the robotaxi race, Waymo is still not what you would call “super profitable.” They have spent billions of dollars researching, testing, and perfecting their lidar, radar, camera, and detailed 3D mapping systems.

Alphabet’s Waymo division is expected to lose $4.4 billion in 2024, and Waymo will need to raise $5.6 billion in funding to sustain its expansion.

“The problem with Waymo cars is that they cost too much money,” Elon Musk criticized.

“For us, safety comes first and cost comes second, not the other way around,” CEO Mawakana responded.

On the other side, many big names such as Uber, Lyft, General Motors (Cruise) have withdrawn from the self-driving car race. Amazon still maintains Zoox – its own robotaxi project – but when it will be mass-commercialized is still unknown.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla is the “heaviest competitor” in the US. Instead of relying on a lidar-radar-camera sensor system like Waymo, Tesla only uses cameras with AI (Autopilot, Full Self-Driving-FSD) to control the car.

Tesla hopes that by fully exploiting AI and the existing electric vehicle network, they can deploy robotaxis at a cheaper cost.

In June 2025, Tesla plans to launch its first self-driving car calling service to the public in Austin, Texas.

This means that, very soon, people will see Teslas waiting at traffic lights next to Waymo’s white robotaxis. A “two-horse race” will surely generate many comparisons about technology, cost, safety and user experience.

The end of taxi profession

No matter how advanced the technology is, the ultimate success will still be determined by people: do they trust their lives and safety to a “driverless car”?

In San Francisco — where Waymo will begin piloting paid self-driving rides in 2023 and expand to the public in 2024 — the public reception has clearly exceeded expectations, according to CPUC data.

Initially, many complained that the robotaxes were slow, didn’t cover the entire city, and couldn’t yet take them to San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

However, as time went on, the number of approved vehicles increased (more than 600 vehicles in San Francisco), the service area expanded to Silicon Valley (an area with a high concentration of technology experts), shortening waiting times and increasing the booking rate.

As a result, no one complains about the “strange car” anymore, but on the contrary, many people are willing to choose Waymo instead of Uber or Lyft, simply because of the convenience, no interaction with the driver, no worries about rating “stars” or tipping.

Previously, if someone in San Francisco wanted to get to the airport on Waymo, they would have to drive downtown, take a ride to the BART station, and then board the plane. Now the company has completed mapping the area around the airport, and is just waiting for additional permission to park the cars for departing passengers.

At that time, the “from hotel door to plane door” experience will be almost entirely handled by robotaxis, reflecting an important step in changing the travel behavior of local people.

Technology and transportation experts agree that self-driving cars are no longer a thing of the future, but are already everywhere.

With installation and operating costs gradually decreasing, digital maps and AI algorithms becoming more and more perfect, it won’t take many years for robotaxis to become the default choice for many people instead of traditional taxis.

Waymo aims to reach 20 million paid self-driving trips by the end of 2025.

Meanwhile, Tesla is not sitting still.

If Elon Musk and his team of engineers can prove that their pure AI technology is safe enough and significantly cheaper, the whole industry will enter a new, more intense race than ever.