Waymo IS Entering San Diego, and More – CleanTechnica

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Waymo confused people a bit on Friday, while announcing new territory it will be going into. As I wrote the other day, Waymo’s new custom-designed Zeekr robotaxi has been spotted in San Diego. Waymo doesn’t offer service in San Diego, though. That said, San Diego is one of the most obvious markets the company could expand into, and it was part of Waymo’s summer road trip series, so I figured it would be one of the next launches Waymo would announce. Apparently, though, I missed a tweet from the company on Friday. Here it is:

So, yes, the company is coming to San Diego in 2026. Though, I noticed that some Waymo customers were confused by this tweet. They seemed to look at the service areas shown in green and assume Waymo was already in operation down in San Diego — but then they couldn’t find service on the app and responded to Waymo about that. I guess they missed the part where the company said “welcoming riders in San Diego in mid-2026!”

Also, the maps shown actually have a simple legend. The green area is the “DNV permitted area.” The big news for Waymo itself was that the company was “officially authorized to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State.” It just got permission to operate down in San Diego, apparently, and wanted to share its progress and what it would mean in 2026.

Anyway … add another city to Waymo’s rapid rollout plan. But not only San Diego.

The company also tweeted a few days ago that coming cities where it is laying the groundwork at the moment for future commercial robotaxi operation include Tampa, New Orleans, and Minneapolis.

The company also solicited feedback and registrations from potential users regarding where they’d like to see service.

For whatever reason, Waymo decides to make a lot of announcements on X/Twitter that it doesn’t post as press releases or blogs. For example, it also recently announced that it was partnering with Metro Los Angeles to attract more riders through discounts and Mobility Wallet integration.

Other recent posts included a short video on how the Waymo Driver operates …

… another short video on how a Waymo vehicle drives with the flow of traffic …

… and there was one about a demo for New York policymakers …

… and there was one about Waymo’s new “AI in Motion” podcast:

Back to the California/San Diego announcement: of course, some commenters brought it back to the old Tesla vs. Waymo debate. One Tesla owner with FSD who has been critical of misleading hype around the technology noted that “Waymo solved Unsupervised Full Self-Driving.”

Meanwhile, a Tesla fan implied that Waymo’s expansion would not last long, as its “empire” would fall like the Roman empire did (once Tesla is a little further along with FSD and robotaxis…).

Waymo wins the battle. Who will win the war?