The California Public Utilities Commission on August 14 approved Waymo's application to offer fully driverless, fare-collecting rides across 18 counties in Northern and Southern California, the largest single expansion of the Alphabet-owned robotaxi service to date1,2,6,7.
The approval opens two entirely new markets — Sacramento and San Diego — and extends Waymo's existing service areas well beyond their current footprints in San Francisco and Los Angeles4. The Los Angeles Times reported the decision will allow Waymo to more than triple its service area in the regions surrounding Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The CPUC's August 14 staff disposition approved Advice Letters 0004 and 0004-A, which Waymo originally filed on January 28. Regulators had suspended the filing through September 25 for further review, and Waymo submitted a supplemental letter in May addressing unaccompanied minors and rider procedures during service disruptions, referencing the PG&E outage that hit San Francisco last December.
The 18 counties span 12 in Northern California — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo — and six in the south: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura. Waymo's current Bay Area service stretches from San Francisco south through the Peninsula to San Jose; the expansion will reach from Brentwood in the East Bay to Sea Ranch in Sonoma County3.
The approval also clears Waymo's new Ojai vehicle for paid service. The Ojai is the renamed Zeekr minivan being added alongside the Jaguar I-PACE; it is described as larger and cheaper to produce than the retrofitted Jaguars Waymo has relied on. Both vehicles run Waymo's sixth-generation Driver autonomy stack.
Waymo requested operating conditions covering all speed limits, freeways, highways, city streets, rural roads, parking lots, driveways, and rail crossings, day and night, in rain, fog, and hail, with the only carve-out being widespread snow or ice.
The California DMV had already widened Waymo's operational design domain on November 21, 2025, covering the expanded geography and the Ojai platform. The CPUC approval fills the remaining regulatory gap by authorizing fare collection without a safety driver.
Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp said expansion "will be gradual and guided by its safety framework". The company said its immediate focus is preparing to launch rider-only service in San Diego later this summer and continuing to validate its technology in Sacramento. Waymo first announced its Sacramento expansion in February and had been manually testing and programming its fleet to learn the city's roads. The company has not named a first paid-ride date for either Sacramento or San Diego.
The filing drew opposition. San Diego Metropolitan Transit System and its Taxicab Advisory Committee protested the January letter, warning about blocked streets, trolley tracks, taxi jobs, and the lack of local veto power. CPUC staff treated the objections as policy fights already decided or as issues for the DMV and a separate rulemaking. On the other side, 29 groups backed the original letter and eight more backed the May supplement, including disability and senior organizations, chambers of commerce, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Waymo's driverless rides are currently available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Phoenix8. The company has said it wants to expand to Dallas, Miami, and Washington, D.C.. Waymo reported its fleet has completed more than 20 million trips and driven more than 220 million fully autonomous miles.
ANALYSIS The CPUC decision removes the last major California regulatory gate for Waymo's expansion, converting a DMV driving permit granted in late 2025 into commercial authorization. The breadth of the approved operating conditions — covering freeways, rural roads, and adverse weather short of snow — sets a wide operational envelope that could reduce the need for incremental filings as Waymo scales within these counties.