Waymo Expands to Denver and Seattle (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0178983058
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/2132215/waymo-expands-to-denver-and-seattle
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/02/waymo-expands-to-denver-and-seattle-with-its-zeekr-made-vans/
> The vehicles will be manually driven to start, before the company starts testing its autonomous tech in both cities. Waymo told TechCrunch that it hopes to start offering robotaxi trips in Denver next year and the Seattle metropolitan area "as soon as we're permitted to do so." Denver and Seattle will be two of the most extreme-weather cities that Waymo is feeling out, giving it a chance to test out its tech in snow, wind, and rain that is harder to come by in places like Phoenix.
The report notes that Waymo currently operates more than 2,000 robotaxis in the U.S., concentrated in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. The self-driving car company is [2]expanding to Dallas, Miami, Washington D.C., and New York, while also "dipping its toes" in [3]additional markets such as Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and Houston.
Further reading: [4]'Why Do Waymos Keep Loitering in Front of My House?'
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/02/waymo-expands-to-denver-and-seattle-with-its-zeekr-made-vans/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/22/2036239/waymo-granted-first-permit-to-being-testing-autonomous-vehicles-in-nyc
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/07/2136225/waymo-starts-robotaxi-testing-in-philadelphia-and-nyc
[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/01/1512223/why-do-waymos-keep-loitering-in-front-of-my-house
Seattle (Score:2)
The hobo steeplechase.
Oh, joy (Score:2)
I don't look forward to Waymo vehicles blocking two lane loads like CO 93 in a snow storm. It's bad enough when people with crappy tires do it.
LiquidASS (Score:2)
I see a major problem with these unmanned taxis. What keeps someone from blowing off something from [1]Liquid ASS [liquidass.com] in one of these things and walking away?
[1] http://www.liquidass.com/
Re: (Score:2)
> I see a major problem with these unmanned taxis. What keeps someone from blowing off something from Liquid ASS in one of these things and walking away?
Having their face recorded on video and their credit card on file to be billed and/or prosecuted afterwards would deter many. Of course the hard-core troublemakers would use a face mask, and a fake or stolen credit card, and would probably skip the prank-fart-bomb kiddy stuff and strap in an IED instead.
OTOH you could do a lot of the same shenanigans with a traditional human-driven taxi as well, with less chance of being caught on video afterwards. So it isn't clear that the problem is any worse for Waymo
Extreme Weather (Score:2)
Seattle has extreme weather...? That's news to me!
Re: (Score:2)
Ya, I kinda figured Seattle, and the PNW in general were in the race with Britain for having pretty much the least extreme weather on the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Seattle gets its fair share of fog and heavy rain all winter long
Meanwhile, Denver will get snow
Re: (Score:2)
Seattle gets precisely no rain that would be called heavy anywhere else in this country.
Seattle has 150 rainy days a year. Just unsteady piss coming from the sky. Our average rainfall per rainy day is measured in mm.
As for fog? maybe 1 or 2 days a year.
Either way, having lived in other parts of the country- nothing about Seattle's weather is extreme.
Re: (Score:2)
Now being pissed on by God with a very swollen prostate for 8 months of the year.... ya, we've got that.
Re: (Score:2)
Seattle and Chicago have almost identical annual rainfall totals. Seattle just gets a slow mist (not even rain most days) vs Chicago getting it all in 30 seconds.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup.
I lived in the midwest.
Also similar annual rainfalls- but you know what I've never had in Seattle? 12 inches of rain in a day, lol
Re: (Score:2)
Well, while it might not be "Fairbanks, AK" weather, it's probably a lot more harsh than, say, LA, Texas, and the other places they've been operating.
Looking at a list: They're in Phoenix AZ, Los Angeles CA, Atlanta GA, and Austin TX.
Of their existing locations, Atlanta gets the most snowfall - 1.5-2.2 inches/year.
Looking it up though, Seattle averages only 4-6 inches of snow a year. I'm honestly shocked. Would have thought it more, being almost as far north as Minot, ND, which gets 40-50 inches/year, w
Re: (Score:2)
> it's probably a lot more harsh than, say, LA, Texas, and the other places they've been operating.
How do you figure?
LA has about 3x as many hot days per summer.
And yes, the ocean is responsible for our temperate climate.
[1]Actual climactic breakdown [cec.org]
As you can see, the Pacific Northwest is the mildest climate on the continent.
[1] https://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/climate-zones-of-north-america/
Re: (Score:2)
Heat is a different challenge than cold, obviously. All heat does is challenge your cooling systems. You actually get more grip with hot tires. Cold brings snow and ice, which changes driving conditions.
Rain cuts traction some, but visibility by potentially a lot.
Snow and ice bring fun with traction and concealed road markings.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it's different.
But we were discussing mild.
Mild weather has a definition, and it precludes hot (Southern California and Texas) and humid (Texas), and days over 0.5" of precipitation.
By the definition of "mild days", I sincerely doubt any major metro has more days in North America than Seattle.
Whether "mild" is better for an EV than "hot" is an entirely different question, and I tend to agree with you on that.
Mild, I do not think, is what they want.
Re: (Score:2)
What they really want, is probably exactly what LA is- warm to hot, but not a desert, little precipitation, little humidity.
Mediterranean climate.
Re: (Score:2)
What they want is probably a steady increase in weather events actually. They started in LA for very good reasons - favorable weather conditions, favorable government conditions. Now they want to spread out for more testing in less optimal conditions, now that they have a baseline they can adapt and tune.
Each city should make reaching for the next one a bit faster.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm quite certain that Los Angeles has more frequent "extreme" weather events than we do. They just have "nicer" weather on average.
We have "drizzly" weather on average.
Los Angeles gets thunderstorms at the end of the summer that drop up to an inch per hour. Here, we'd call that the end times. They get it every year.
Maybe they just want to improve their ability to drive in really light rain. We've got that in spades.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I wasn't considering "mild" in the context of humans, but in terms of self-driving cars. With them, the modifications for driving in the heat, at least until the pavement starts melting, are minimal.
You might be right about Seattle. Consider that when I looked up Seattle's actual weather, I ended up calling it a "baby step" in terms of extending autonomous cars into more extreme climates.
I was figuring that a northern state would have more severe weather, I admitted I was wrong in my post original p
Re: (Score:2)
I know you did, but even those metrics don't quite do it justice.
As pointed out elsewhere, there are places with similar numbers with weather nowhere near ours.
For example, our 37 or so inches of precipitation, are spread across ~168 days.
The average rainy day here is about 50mm of precipitation- it's not what most people would even call "rain".
Snow? It's true that it snows... but events of snow actually sticking to the road are as far as 5 years apart.
Severe weather events? Say- a storm that actuall
Re:Extreme Weather (Compared to current footprint) (Score:2)
> Seattle has extreme weather...? That's news to me!
Why yes it does! Seattle has between 4 and 14 seasons , depending on how sensitive you are to the false season changes and how smoky the seasons become.
But most importantly, compared to the existing Waymo service areas (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta), both Denver and Seattle have more seasonal weather variations in any 3-month period.
Denver gets things like frost-to-extreme heat-to-snowfall within arbitrary 36-hour periods, and Seattle goes from 30s with marine clouds (mist an