Waymo Adds Nearly 250 Square Miles in Five Cities, but Publishes No Per-City Area and No Vehicle Count
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Waymo Adds Nearly 250 Square Miles in Five Cities, but Publishes No Per-City Area and No Vehicle Count
The Oct. 27 expansion covers Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego and the Bay Area; the denominator that matters, cars per square mile, is missing.
Waymo said on Oct. 27 that it will add nearly 250 square miles of driverless service across five cities over the following week, and it gave neither a square-mileage split by city nor the number of vehicles that will cover the new ground. Without the second figure the first says little about capacity.
The number that matters here is not area but cars per square mile, which sets how long a rider waits and how many trips a city can serve. Waymo's own post lists the new territory and contains no rider counts. Electrek, which first put the numbers beside Tesla's, flagged the same two omissions.
What Waymo said it is adding
The post names five markets and one change in each. Los Angeles service extends down the coast into the South Bay, adding Torrance; Electrek also lists Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach. In Nashville riders can travel farther south, including to the zoo. Orlando's east-side coverage nearly doubles. San Diego extends north to La Jolla, and the Bay Area reaches farther south, with a new BART connection at Berryessa station in San Jose.
Electrek reports that Waymo said in May it covered more than 1,400 square miles across 11 cities. It now operates in 15 U.S. metros and reports more than 500,000 paid rides a week, according to Electrek; the Waymo post carries neither figure.
Two ways to read 250 square miles
The first reading treats 250 square miles as 18% growth on the May footprint of 1,400. The second observes that Nashville opened in April with about 60 square miles and San Diego opened Sept. 1 with about 50, per Electrek. Adding 250 square miles across five cities, some of them young, could mean a service zone that grows faster than the fleet that serves it.
That is an inference, not a finding. Waymo has not said how many vehicles it is adding, so the thinner-coverage case and the fleet-grows-in-step case both fit the published facts.
Waymo against Tesla, on the same units
Electrek compares the new area with the roughly 254-square-mile Houston zone Tesla runs, which we covered with a count of 34 tracked cars. On miles, the gap is wider than on area, and the comparison has a catch.
| Measure | Waymo | Tesla |
|---|---|---|
| Rider-only miles per week, national | 3.90 million (Q2 2026 average) | 558,000 (best week) |
| Miles per week, Austin | about 406,000 (Q2 average) | 438,000 (week to Oct. 18) |
| Smallest tracked market | Atlanta, about 250,000 | Miami, 5,626 |
The figures come from Robotaxi Tracker, a community project that compiles Tesla's weekly safety reports and Waymo's quarterly data hub, as relayed by Electrek. Waymo publishes about three months after a quarter ends, so a Q2 average sits beside a single recent week of Tesla's. Electrek's own commenters question whether Tesla's driverless miles and Waymo's rider-only miles are equivalent.
- Austin438K miles
- Dallas95K miles
- Houston7288 miles
- Tampa6131 miles
- Orlando6008 miles
- Miami5626 miles
Source: Robotaxi Tracker via Electrek, accessed 2026-10-27
Austin carries about 79% of Tesla's total. Waymo's smallest tracked market, Atlanta, averaged 250,000 miles a week in Q2, which is more than every Tesla market except Austin.
What would change this read
A fleet figure from Waymo for any of the five cities would settle it. So would Waymo's Q3 safety data, which on the three-month lag should appear around the start of next year, and which would show whether miles per week rose with the new zones. Waymo has said it is mapping Toronto for a 2028 launch, per Electrek, so capacity is also being spread over a wider list of cities.
Waymo is not alone in withholding the count: Bedrock Robotics' $600 million round also came without a unit figure. Until then, 250 square miles is an announced figure; energised capacity is a different number, and nobody has published it.
Sources
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