Waymo expands CA service area by ~50% just before Tesla robotaxi launch
Waymo is once again expanding its driverless taxi service areas in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, adding over 80 square miles total between the three areas.
The move comes less than a week before the tentative, much-anticipated launch of Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, another market that Waymo operates in.
Waymo currently operates a driverless taxi service in several areas around the country, with three distinct service areas in California – San Francisco, nearby Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles.
Those service areas have gradually gotten larger over time, as Waymo tests and maps new roads that it’s confident its vehicles can operate on autonomously. Waymo has also gradually rolled out its service to wider and wider audiences, typically starting in new areas with employee-only ridership, then a gradual release to the public.
LA and SF are fully public now, while the Silicon Valley area only opened a few months ago and is not fully publicly available for ridership. Waymo’s SF and Silicon Valley service areas are disconnected, so despite being nearby, you can’t ride a Waymo from one to the other.
Today and tomorrow, all three of those California service areas are increasing in size substantially, adding about 50% to the total service area in the state, bringing it to a total of around 250 square miles.
As of today, riders in San Francisco now have access to much more of the peninsula, including Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae, and all the way down to Burlingame.
The nearby Silicon Valley area isn’t fully open to the public yet, but that too expanded today, into Menlo Park and covering more of Palo Alto.
LA service is also expanding, though it’s not quite usable yet today – the expansion will take place tomorrow, June 18, for the LA area. This area is gaining new coverage in just about every direction, rather than expanding out in one direction like the SF expansion.
The new LA area covers Playa Del Rey, Ladera Heights, Echo Park, Silverlake, more of Inglewood and all of famous Sunset Boulevard.
The new service area encompasses UCLA for the first time, though it had previously gone up to Westwood, right next to campus. Waymo had previously expanded to encompass Howard Hughes center and the Inglewood stadium and the Forum (I hate calling stadia by their corporate names…) earlier this year, adding great options for those who want to avoid parking or who are thinking of imbibing liquids that are not conducive to operating heavy machinery.
Notably, the new SF and LA service areas both do not include their local international airports. The SF area skirts around SFO, keeping some distance to the west of the 101, and the LA area goes right up to the North edge of LAX but doesn’t quiiiite get there.
It looks like it would be possible to get a drop off spot within an easy walk of LAX, perhaps at the long-term parking lots just nearby, but Waymo’s area also stops just a couple hundred yards short of the “LAX-it” lot specifically set up for ride-hailing app usage.
Currently, Waymo’s Phoenix service area does include service to Sky Harbor airport, but it looks like California riders will have to wait a little longer for something like that. The Silicon Valley service area does now encompass Palo Alto airport, and LA encompasses Santa Monica airport, but those are both tiny airports more for private planes or enthusiasts.
So far, Waymo can’t be used on the freeways in Los Angeles, though it can in San Francisco for some riders. This means that for certain cross-town trips, taking a Waymo is likely quite a bit slower than otherwise.
But the service is currently testing on LA’s freeways, and we expect it to release that service to the public soon.
If you’d like to see a (very long) writeup/video of our ride in a Waymo when it first opened its LA area, see here: We tested Waymo’s driverless taxi in LA in the perfect chaos of a Venice Beach weekend
Comparisons to Tesla before robotaxi launch
It’s somewhat of a different approach than that taken by Tesla, another company that has been promising autonomous driving for many years, but has yet to deliver it.
Tesla’s level 2 Autopilot driver assist system was first available on highways, rather than surface streets. Highways, despite being higher speed, are much safer and less complex than surface streets, since they are well-marked and don’t have cross-traffic or road users with other modes of transportation. So, theoretically, they should be easier to operate on.
It’s interesting that Waymo started with surface streets, which are a more complex problem, and is available in some fairly complex cities to drive in, as well. While its first service area, Phoenix, is a relatively easy city to drive in, San Francisco is very difficult to drive in and Los Angeles has plenty of complexity as well.
Waymo’s system is a “level 4” system according to the SAE’s Levels of driving automation, in contrast with Tesla’s current level 2 system (which both Autopilot and FSD fall under). A level 2 system means the car can do a lot of tasks, but responsibility still falls on the driver at all times. A level 4 system can operate with no driver at all, but only in limited circumstances (in this case, geofencing). Tesla’s Austin rollout this weekend would be level 4 – if it doesn’t rely fully on teleoperation.
The comparison to Tesla is also relevant in that, while Waymo has been operating driverless taxis for years now, Tesla has been talking about it, but hasn’t yet done it. For over a decade, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised that a Tesla would be able to drive itself, with nobody in the car, “next year” – continually pushing back the timeline each year.
Now, supposedly, the service will come out in less than a week, as Tesla says it will start offering autonomous rides in Austin on June 22.
This comes after, and I quote, “several days” of testing – again, a contrast to Waymo’s method, which has included months of testing in markets before gradually rolling out to employees, limited public release, and then wide public releases, whenever they add new service areas or modes (such as highway driving).
Yesterday, Electrek released a report about the haphazard nature of Tesla’s driverless service rollout (and another about an erroneous Bloomberg report comparing Waymo and Tesla’s safety). Rest assured we will be watching the launch closely, whether it happens next week, or “next year,” as has been promised for the last decade or so.
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A Tesla manager who was recently fired for warning that CEO Elon Musk was ruining the company, Matthew LaBrot, has given an interview to give more details about the situation and how he doesn’t see Tesla coming out of it.
Last month, we reported on how LaBrot, a 5-year veteran manager at Tesla, led an effort to represent Tesla employees who believe CEO Elon Musk has become an obstacle to the company’s success through an open letter.
He called for Musk to resign:
The damage done to Elon’s personal brand is now irreversible and as the public face of Tesla, that damage has become our burden. We are now at a crossroads: continue with Elon as CEO and face further decline as customers abandon the brand, or move forward without him and allow our products and mission to succeed or fail on their own.
Unsurprisingly, he was quickly let go.
LaBrot has never given an interview with Hard Reset in which he went into a lot more detail about the situation.
First off, after being attacked by Musk fans, LaBrot established that he was a successful employee at Tesla.
He joined the automaker in 2019 as an assistant manager and quickly advanced through the ranks, becoming a general manager and subsequently transitioning to corporate roles in sales and training.
He said:
I think I added a ton of value, especially the last position. Every sales and delivery employee was being trained through my words. And I think that that shows the trust that Tesla had in me. It is kind of crazy to be on the outside now, no longer being a part of that.
LaBrot owns a Cybertruck and a Model Y. You can’t call him a Tesla hater.
He is a true believer in the mission to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and his job revolved around that:
You know, this wasn’t a new thing for me. Over my entire time at Tesla, I considered myself an activist for electric vehicles, and clean energy. For almost six years, I’ve been focused on overcoming misinformation about EVs and helping grow that mission. It has become easier in recent years, but in my first couple of years at the company, every sales conversation we would have involved trying to change people’s opinions. Once we hit a tipping point where the person who’s running this company is now pushing customers away from the mission, then the priority shifted. That priority was to be an activist to try to save the company.
The former Tesla manager explained that he used to admire Musk and that he even joined Twitter when he bought it, but he quickly got disillusioned by it.
From there, he reported starting to see growing difficulties trying to convince Tesla customers to upgrade and return to the brand, which he partly linked to what Musk was saying on the social media platform and his public support for people Tesla has been fighting in its mission to accelerate EV adoption.
When asked how Musk has been allowed to continue running Tesla amid all the various controversies, he said that he thought the board would act after Trump’s inauguration, but he saw them instead doubling down, allowing him to lead all-hands meetings by himself without other leadership.
He became the clear sole leader at Tesla.
LaBrott also highlighted how Tesla claimed that the decline in sales in Q1 was solely due to the Model Y changeover, as we have been extensively reporting over the last few months, the problem is much bigger:
Without speaking to anything that hasn’t been published — the Q1 numbers obviously came out and showed a decline. You’ll hear what they’re saying about while we were ramping up production, that’s why we didn’t sell very many cars. People were waiting for new Model Y. Fine. But now you can just use your eyes and drive by any location and see how many new Model Ys are available, in inventory. You can go to the Tesla website, and get almost any configuration of a new Model Y available same day. That is not how Tesla works. The company needs a backlog in orders to hit the delivery numbers that they have.
The former manager was pretty clear that he doesn’t see this trend getting reversed for anything other than Musk leaving and even also selling his stake in Tesla:
I don’t think that there’s anything he can do to change the people’s opinion that have decided they’re not going to support Tesla outside of him leaving. And even a lot of people that I’ve spoken to don’t even think that’s enough at this point. They want him to sell all his shares and things like that, which I don’t expect. I think for Tesla, as far as vehicle sales go, it’s game over.
He highlighted that he understands that Musk has been claiming he doesn’t care about EV sales anymore because he believes it’s all about autonomous driving and robots, which LaBrot actually likes as a long term goal, but he thinks the current EV sale trend will result in Tesla becoming unprofitable before it can get there.
LaBrot had a message to current Tesla employees:
For employees still there, collect your paycheck if you want, ride this thing down to the grave, that makes sense to me financially. But I think it’s just important for people to acknowledge that this is not going to get better with that guy in charge.
Though he sympathizes with people over the current job market and believes that companies are taking advantage of this situation, which discourages people from speaking out against situations like the one at Tesla.
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Like manual transmission shifting, the ability back a tow hitch under a trailer coupler seems to be a skill that younger generations have given up on – but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to haul their bikes, boats, or RVs out into the wilderness. Now, a new patent reveals GM’s plans to make hooking a trailer to your vehicle even easier, with a drone.
The watchdogs over at GM Authority have uncovered a new filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published 27MAY2025, under patent number US 12,312,107 B2.
The new GM patent describes a smart trailering system that uses a semi-autonomous electric drone to help inexperienced drivers manage their combined towing rigs with a combination of vehicle telematics and a comprehensive array of cameras, radar, and LiDAR sensors that are constantly tracking the truck, the trailer, and the road conditions ahead.
More than that, however, the drone system reportedly runs a series of safety checks that new trailerers and RVers may not know how – or even that they should be doing. These include checks to ensure that the trailer is properly attached to the hitch, checking the trailer’s load balance for handling and safety, and confirming that brake lights and turn signals are functioning properly.
Guardian angel drone
Once on the road, the drone can follow along, providing a live video feed to eliminate blind spots while changing lanes. GM says the system could also alert the driver if something is wrong, like if the trailer is swaying too much or if cargo has come loose or shifted unexpectedly.
Finally, the drone can fly directly above the vehicle and trailer rig, giving drivers the sort of overhead “360” view they might already be familiar with in their GM vehicles – but expanded to include the trailer as well. In concept, it’ll look something like this (below).
GM drone overhead view
There’s a lot more to this, with boat launching assist, hitch guidance, and other safety angles, but you get the idea. This isn’t quite the self-hitching, self-parking, Segway-like Airstream concept shown at CES 2022, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction – especially if, like me, you believe that the best way to teach someone to appreciate nature is to get them out in it.
Let us know what you think of all this drone assisted high-tech driver support tech GM is working on in the comments.
SOURCES: USPTO, via GM Authority; featured image via ChatGPT.
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