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St. Louis is officially on Waymo’s radar. The autonomous rideshare company announced Wednesday that it’s beginning the first steps toward launching robotaxi service in the Gateway City, marking another major expansion for the Alphabet-owned brand.
Waymo is a driverless taxi service that uses fully autonomous, all-electric vehicles to transport riders without a human behind the wheel. The company operates under Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and has already launched commercial robotaxi service in cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Atlanta.
For now, Waymo’s Jaguar I-PACE vehicles in St. Louis won’t be driverless just yet. Staff members will manually drive the cars around downtown this week to map the area and help the system learn local roads. That includes identifying curbs, crosswalks, traffic signs, speed limits and lane markings, data Waymo uses alongside AI to safely navigate once the vehicles go fully autonomous.
The company says this early phase is about understanding the community and laying the groundwork for public rider service in the future. Waymo emphasized it will follow the same gradual rollout approach it used in its other cities, where the service scales over time as the technology improves.
Missouri House Speaker Jon Patterson called the expansion “an exciting step forward,” adding that Waymo could provide residents with a safe and reliable transportation option. MADD Heartland Regional Executive Director Jerod Breit also welcomed the move, noting that autonomous vehicles have the potential to reduce crashes caused by impaired or unsafe driving.
Waymo says its vehicles have recorded 91% fewer serious-injury crashes compared to the average human driver in other cities where they operate.
Once the service launches, riders will be able to request trips through the Waymo app. After entering the destination, users hop into an arriving Jaguar I-PACE, where a screen displays the route as the car handles the driving.
St. Louis joins Baltimore and Pittsburgh as the newest markets Waymo is testing, bringing the company’s footprint to 26 cities nationwide. Waymo has logged more than 10 million paid trips since 2020 and continues expanding into regions with more challenging weather, something St. Louis should provide plenty of.
There’s no official date yet for when fully driverless rides will begin locally, but the company says it plans to start downtown before gradually widening coverage across the metro area.