The California Public Utilities Commission on August 14 approved Waymo's largest robotaxi expansion to date, clearing the Alphabet-owned company to offer paid, fully driverless rides across 18 counties spanning from Sonoma to San Diego1,3,5,9.
The approval opens two entirely new markets — Sacramento and San Diego — while more than tripling Waymo's existing service area around Los Angeles and San Francisco14. Previously, Waymo had been restricted to the San Francisco Peninsula, San Jose, and within Los Angeles city limits.
The 18 counties covered include 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 Southern California (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura). The approved operational area stretches from Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks down to San Diego in the south, and from Sacramento to San Jose in the north.
The CPUC's disposition approved Advice Letters 0004 and 0004-A, which Waymo originally filed on January 2810. Regulators suspended the filing for further review, and Waymo submitted a supplemental letter in May addressing policies on unaccompanied minors and rider procedures during service disruptions. The approval authorizes fared driverless passenger service in the expanded territory and on Waymo's new Ojai vehicles, effective August 14.
The Ojai is Waymo's sixth-generation robotaxi platform, a renamed Zeekr minivan jointly developed with the Chinese automaker. Zeekr produces the chassis and body, while Waymo installs its sensors, computers, and software. The Ojai is positioned as a larger and cheaper-to-produce alternative to the retrofitted Jaguar I-Pace models that have formed Waymo's fleet of roughly 3,000 vehicles.
Waymo's requested operating conditions cover 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 expansion did not proceed without opposition. San Diego's Metropolitan Transit System and its Taxicab Advisory Committee protested the original filing, citing concerns about blocked streets, trolley tracks, taxi jobs, and the lack of local veto power. CPUC staff determined those objections did not meet the commission's protest rules. Twenty-nine organizations backed the initial letter, and eight additional groups endorsed the May supplement, including disability and senior advocacy groups, chambers of commerce, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Waymo said the rollout "will be gradual and guided by our safety framework"8. The company's immediate focus is preparing to launch rider-only service in San Diego later this summer and continuing to validate its technology in Sacramento12. Waymo first announced its intention to expand into San Diego in November 2025 and into Sacramento in February 2026.
The California DMV had already widened Waymo's operational design domain on November 21, 2025, covering the additional areas and the Ojai platform. The CPUC approval fills the remaining regulatory gap by authorizing fare collection without a safety driver.
Waymo currently provides more than 500,000 fully autonomous electric trips weekly and operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta7. The company has logged more than 220 million fully autonomous miles and claims its vehicles are involved in an estimated 94% fewer collisions causing serious injuries compared with human drivers.
The expansion comes alongside a June recall of nearly 4,000 robotaxis after more than a dozen incidents in which vehicles entered closed freeway construction zones, as reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Waymo is also targeting entry into Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Washington, D.C..
ANALYSIS The CPUC decision effectively removes the last major state-level regulatory barrier to Waymo's California scaling, consolidating DMV and CPUC authorizations into a single operational framework across the state's most populated corridors. The simultaneous approval of the Ojai platform alongside the geographic expansion positions Waymo to begin fleet turnover at scale as it pursues its stated target of 1 million rides per week by year-end.