Waymo starts driverless freeway rides for Uber riders in Austin
Waymo is gradually routing some Austin Uber trips onto freeways after testing fully driverless freeway operation there since February 2026. It already offers freeway rides in four other cities.
In short: Waymo trips booked through Uber in Austin can now use freeways, not just surface streets.
The details
- Rolling out gradually on select trips, per Waymo's statement to CBS Austin.
- Fully driverless freeway testing in Austin since February 2026, after specialist-supervised runs.
- Waymo already offers freeway rides in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami and says it has logged more than 1 million fully autonomous freeway miles with riders.
- Waymo has run driverless rides on Uber in Austin since March 2025.
- Under Texas Senate Bill 2807, registered commercial AVs may operate on public roads; no separate freeway authorization was needed.
Why it matters
Freeways are where robotaxis compete with human drivers on time. Surface-street-only service means slower trips to places like airports. Higher speeds also raise the stakes of each mistake, which is why operators add freeways only after months of testing. It also lands in the same city where Tesla is scaling its Cybercab.
Sources Sources verified
Related briefings
More in Autonomous Driving & Logistics →Tesla's Cybercab month one vs. Waymo: fleet size isn't the whole race
Tesla's Austin Cybercab fleet grew quickly after its Sept. 3 launch, but Waymo runs 4,000+ driverless cars in 15 U.S. markets and 500,000+ paid rides a week. Here's what separates them.
Ørsted and Skyports fly 55–65 kg kits BVLOS to North Sea turbines
A four-week Hornsea 2 trial used automated hook pickup to move maintenance packs ~4 km beyond visual line of sight — cutting vessel lifts before techs arrive.
Hesai's Kosmo turns real rooms into robot training worlds in minutes
The lidar maker launched Kosmo One (8K spatial camera) plus Kosmo World cloud, partnering with Galbot and Dexmal; a Dairy Queen scan cut modeling from ~300 hours to 15 minutes.
Newsletter
Robrief Weekly
One email a week with the robotics news that matters. Free, unsubscribe anytime.