Waymo plans to begin offering its paid robotic ride service in Washington, D.C., next year as the leading U.S. self-driving tech company pushes to grow its business by attracting millions of new riders.

The Mountain View, California-based firm, which already makes money hauling passengers in driverless vehicles in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and several Bay Area communities, said it’s resuming testing in Washington in preparation to add the service there. Waymo also intends to launch in Miami this year and in Atlanta in 2026, while further expanding the service in the cities where it’s already available.

Since the collapse of General Motors-backed Cruise, which the automaker eliminated last year after a 2023 accident in San Francisco, Waymo has had the robotaxi field mainly to itself in the U.S. though Elon Musk’s Tesla hopes to change that. Musk has said the EV maker will launch limited rider service in Austin, Texas, where it’s based, in June though many details of that program haven’t been announced. Importantly, Tesla hasn’t done the same type of extensive on-road testing Waymo has since 2009, and Musk claims automated vehicles can operate safely with only cameras, eschewing the laser lidar and radar every other robotaxi developer considers essential to operating safely. (A recent “Wile E. Coyote” test showing how cars with cameras alone misread road conditions underscored the flaw in Musk’s thinking.)

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Last year was a major turning point for Waymo with launches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which Forbes estimates resulted in about $100 million of revenue in 2024. The service provides more than 200,000 paid rides a week in all the cities it operates in. So far, it has avoided causing serious traffic accidents and Waymo riders haven’t been harmed in its vehicles, but the risk that could happen grows as Waymo expands.

“Nobody except them knows if they’re moving too quickly,” said Phil Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who studies autonomous vehicle technology. “They're going to expand according to their risk tolerance.”

While all of Waymo’s commercial operations are in the U.S., it’s begun testing robotaxis in Tokyo.

Along with Tesla, Amazon’s Zoox wants to launch its robotaxi service in Las Vegas this year and May Mobility, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based startup, offers an autonomous ride service in an Atlanta suburb, as well as free rides in test vehicles in Michigan, Texas, Minnesota, Arizona and California.