Waymo starts fully autonomous rides in LA tomorrow; Austin later this year
Waymo has announced that it will start offering fully autonomous ride-hailing services to the general public in Los Angeles starting tomorrow, March 14th, and that Austin, Texas will open up “later this year.”
Waymo has been testing its Level 4 autonomous ride-hailing service in Los Angeles since late 2022, and is now finally ready to open up the service officially.
Level 4 is one of the SAE driving automation levels, signaling that the car drives itself with no human driver input, but is limited to certain circumstances – most driver assist systems on cars today (e.g. Autopilot, Super Cruise, etc.) count as Level 2, with only Mercedes offering a Level 3 system in the US. In this case, Waymo’s limitation means it’s geofenced to a particular service area.
Waymo has spent the last few months hosting its “Waymo Tour,” where it bounced around small parts of town to offer free rides to locals in various neighborhoods one-by-one (we experienced it on a chaotic weekend day in Venice Beach). Now, Waymo is ready to open up to all the regions its tour previously covered, spanning from Santa Monica to downtown LA, and will operate 24/7 in the stated coverage area.
The LA service area covers a somewhat odd geographical area, encompassing Santa Monica, Century City, K-Town and Downtown, with parts of West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Culver City. It seems to stop at Santa Monica Blvd on the north end, signaling that Waymo would rather deal with traffic than with tight, twisty, one-lane hill streets (where lots of people street park and give you no room to drive).
In total, the area covers approximately 63 square miles – a larger area than Waymo’s 47mi² San Francisco service area, but much smaller than the 180mi² area that Waymo operates in in Phoenix. Waymo says that it wants to “scale its operations over time,” and cover a larger area than this, but doesn’t give a timeline for doing so.
And these rides don’t start some time in the distant future – they start tomorrow. So if you’re interested, you better hop on the waitlist quick – or find a time machine, because it already has 50,000 Angelenos on it, so if you join today you might be waiting for a while.
In the beginning, Waymo plans to offer these services for free, but “in the coming weeks” it will transition to a paid model thanks to recent approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. This is part of why Waymo started the “tour” in LA months ago, because CPUC requires a certain timeline of operation before transitioning to paid services.
Waymo will also start offering rides in Austin, Texas soon, but hasn’t given a specific timeline for when that will happen, only stating today that it would happen “later this year.” Waymo’s coverage area in Austin is 43 square miles, and it has already started testing autonomous, but for Waymo employees only.
If you want to sign up and get on the waitlist for Waymo’s LA (or Austin) service, download the Waymo One app and it will add you to the waitlist for whatever coverage area you’re close to.
Electrek’s Take
Waymo touts that its LA tour went quite well, claiming that it earned an average 4.7/5.0 star drive rating across 15,000 rides (which is hard to compare, given the uniqueness of its service). It shared a video of one of its vehicles correctly interpreting a police officer’s hand signals in a complicated LA intersection, which is quite impressive.
When we rode in a Waymo in LA, we were mostly impressed as well. While the vehicle had difficulty in a few ways (getting stuck and having to phone home on 2 separate occasions, one of which was a complex intersection, and one of which was just a tight cul-de-sac that a human-driven car wrongly led it down), it mostly handled an extremely chaotic driving situation very well.
It recognized and reacted to pedestrians early – in fact much quicker than I would have as a human driver – and confidently handled a complicated moment with closed lanes, difficult visibility, cones in the road, tree work ahead and oncoming traffic all at once.
If you want to read more about it, you can read our long writeup of the drive here: We tested Waymo’s driverless taxi in LA in the perfect chaos of Venice Beach.
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Electricity demand is surging in Texas, and solar, wind, and battery storage are meeting it.
According to new data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), electricity demand across the Texas grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) hit record highs in the first nine months of 2025. ERCOT, which supplies power to about 90% of the state, saw demand jump 5% year-over-year to 372 terawatt hours (TWh) – a 23% increase since 2021. No other major US grid has grown faster over the past year.
Solar and wind keep ERCOT’s grid steady
The biggest growth story in Texas power generation is solar. Utility-scale solar plants produced 45 TWh from January through September, up 50% from 2024 and nearly four times what they generated in 2021 (11 TWh). Wind power also continued to climb, producing 87 TWh through September – a 4% increase from last year and 36% more than in 2021.
Together, wind and solar supplied 36% of ERCOT’s total electricity over those nine months. Solar, in particular, has transformed Texas’s daytime energy mix. From June to September, ERCOT solar farms generated an average of 24 gigawatts (GW) between noon and 1 pm – double the midday output from 2023. That growth has pushed down natural gas use at midday from 50% of the mix in 2023 to 37% this year.
Battery storage is filling in the gaps
Batteries charge during the day when wind and solar generation are the highest, and they produce electricity when generation from wind and solar slows down. ERCOT began reporting battery output separately in October 2024 in its hourly grid data, and it’s clear that batteries are now helping to smooth out evening peaks. This past summer, batteries supplied an average of 4 GW of power around 8 pm, right as solar production dropped off.
Natural gas is flatlining
Natural gas is still Texas’s dominant power source, but it isn’t growing like it used to. Between January and September, gas-fired plants generated 158 TWh of electricity, compared to 161 TWh in 2023. Gas comprised 43% of ERCOT’s generation mix during the first nine months of 2025, down from 47% in the first nine months of 2023 and 2024.
More demand growth ahead
The EIA expects Texas electricity demand to keep rising faster than any other grid in the US. In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA projects ERCOT’s demand will climb another 14% in the first nine months of 2026, reaching 425 TWh. That means Texas will need even more solar, wind, and battery storage to keep up with its breakneck growth.
Read more: This $900 million solar farm in Texas is going 100% to data centers
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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GM is recalling nearly 23,000 Chevy Equinox EV and Cadillac Optiq models due to a defect where the tire tread could fall off.
GM is recalling more Chevy Equinox EV models
In a letter sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), GM said it has decided to issue a safety recall for certain Chevy Equinox EV and Cadillac Optiq models from model years 2025 to 2026.
This time, it isn’t necessarily GM’s fault. The vehicles may be equipped with 21″ all-season tires that Continental Tire is recalling.
According to Continental, the tires were produced during the week of October 6, 2024, and may have a defect where the tire tread could partially or fully detach. The records show the defect is due to a nonconforming tread base rubber compound.
Owners of affected vehicles may notice unusual tread wear or bulging, vibration while driving, or tire noises. GM is unaware of any incidents related to the defect, but is issuing the recall out of an abundance of caution.
On September 18, 2025, GM inspected the assembly plant and confirmed there were no suspect tires in stock. The 21″ tires come standard on RS trims and are optional on LT1 and LT2 grades.
Although GM is recalling 22,914 Chevy Equinox EVs and Cadillac Optiqs, it estimates that only about 1% of them have the defect.
The recall includes:
- 2026 Cadillac Optiq: 214
- 2026 Chevy Equinox EV: 1,832
- 2025 Cadillac Optiq: 3,468
- 2025 Chevy Equinox EV: 17,400
GM dealers will check all four tires and replace them if needed, free of charge. Dealers were notified on October 16. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed out on December 1, 2025.
You can contact Chevrolet’s customer service number at 1-800-222-1020 or Cadillac’s at 1-800-333-4223. GM’s recall number is N252525030. Owners can also call the NHTSA hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or visit the nhtsa.gov website for more information.
The Chevy Equinox EV is now the third best-selling EV in the US, trailing only the Tesla Model Y and Model 3. Meanwhile, Cadillac’s entry-level Optiq SUV is the fifth-most-popular luxury EV. The recall is minor and only affects a small percentage of models, so it’s not expected to have a major impact.
If you want to test one of them for yourself, we can help you get started. Check out our links below to find available Chevy Equinox EV and Cadillac Optiq models near you.
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In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Tesla’s earnings madness, Rivian layoffs, Ford pausing F-150 Lightning, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
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Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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