DETROIT - Waymo has begun operating fully driverless cars in Detroit, with no one behind the wheel, but for now its only passengers are the company's own employees, a Waymo spokesman said on Tuesday.
"We'll continue driving in the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods like Corktown, Midtown, Hamtramck and Indian Village, as we work to gradually expand across the broader metropolitan area over time," the spokesman, Chris Bonelli, said in an email to the Detroit Free Press. "Rides will initially only be available to Waymo employees, as we work to open our doors to public riders in the future. We'll follow our safety framework and serve riders in Detroit when we've properly validated our technology in the city and our local operations are ready."
The company did not give a date for public service. Mr. Bonelli said the move followed months spent familiarizing the Waymo Driver, the company's self-driving system, with the city, coordinating with local officials and meeting community members. Less than a month ago, the company said trained specialists were still at the wheel of its Detroit vehicles and that it had not yet begun fully autonomous testing there, the Free Press reported.
Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet, announced its plan to come to Detroit on Nov. 3, 2025. In a post that day, the company said it had long kept an engineering team in the suburb of Novi, had regularly tested in Detroit during winter weather to develop its ability to drive in snow and ice, including in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and expected its sixth-generation driving system to be on the city's streets over the winter.
City officials said they had been preparing for the cars. "Waymo's deployment in Detroit is regulated by the State of Michigan," Ryan Michael, the city's deputy chief of business innovation and emerging industries, said in a statement reported by WXYZ-TV. He said the city's Office of Mobility Innovation had been meeting regularly with the company so that agencies, including the police and fire departments, were "prepared to support a safe and successful deployment," and had shared lessons from a city cold-weather autonomous vehicle pilot and a pilot of automated vehicles for older and disabled residents.
Waymo already carries paying riders in cities including Phoenix, where it opened its first robotaxi service in 2020, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. In its message to the Free Press, the company said that across more than 270 million fully autonomous miles in the cities where it operates, its cars had been involved in 95 percent fewer crashes causing serious or fatal injury than human drivers in the same areas. Those figures come from the company.
The expansion comes as the company faces scrutiny elsewhere. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a January crash in Santa Monica, Calif., in which a Waymo struck a 9-year-old child in a school zone, causing minor injuries, and dozens of Waymos blocked traffic in San Francisco during July 4 festivities, the Free Press noted.
N. Charles Anderson, president and chief executive of the Urban League of Detroit and Southeastern Michigan, which WXYZ described as one of Waymo's community partners, said he had vowed never to ride in a self-driving car until he tried one in Nashville this summer. "I got in and I was sold," he told the station.
