Driverless taxis from Waymo are headed to Austin this fall

Those empty Cruise cars and new Volkswagen ID Buzz vehicles meandering through Austin will soon have a new friend. A leading self-driving car company has joined the chat.

Alphabet’s autonomous driving technology company, Waymo, announced on Thursday, August 3, that Austin would be the fourth major city to get its robotaxis, joining Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

The program will begin this fall, with public rides, including fully autonomous deployment, coming in the ensuing months.

“Austin is one of the most vibrant and dynamic cities in the country, and we’ve found that the Waymo Driver is adapting to its complex cityscape incredibly quickly,” said Saswat Panigrahi, chief product officer at Waymo, in a release. “Autonomous vehicles make transportation safer, greener and more accessible, and we can’t wait for Austinites to experience these benefits for themselves.”

Waymo’s cars will move through “a large portion of the city night and day,” in neighborhoods like Downtown Austin, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park, and beyond.

It’s a return of sorts for Waymo, which made news in 2015 when the company gave a legally blind man named Steve Mahan the world’s first ride on public roads in an autonomous vehicle down an Austin street. In 2019, Alphabet closed its Austin office.