Waymo Picks Toronto for Its First Canadian Service, With Riders Due in 2028

Waymo said on October 16 that Toronto will be its first Canadian city, with human-driven mapping cars on the streets within days and the first public riders targeted for 2028.

The company's announcement post lays out three phases: manual driving to build high-definition maps, then testing with trained specialists behind the wheel, then a validation period meant to confirm the Waymo Driver copes with Toronto conditions. It gives a date only for the last step.

What Waymo has and has not committed to

The post names two operating partners. Element Fleet Management, headquartered in Toronto, will run fleet maintenance and operations, and Magna International is listed as a manufacturing partner. Waymo gives no vehicle model and no fleet size, so the picture below shows a Waymo depot in California, not anything in Canada.

The jobs figure is similarly loose. Waymo and Element plan "hundreds of roles over time" in maintenance, validation driving and customer service, with no split by role and no date.

Question	Waymo's October 16 post
First public riders	2028
Human-driven mapping starts	"Coming days"
Fleet size	Not given
Provincial approval	Not mentioned
Winter performance	Links to a separate post, no Toronto data

The safety figures are Waymo's own

The post cites more than 400 million fully autonomous kilometres and says the Waymo Driver was involved in 95% fewer crashes with serious injury or worse than human drivers in its operating cities, which it restates as 20 times fewer. Both are company figures from its existing operating cities, and the post offers no Toronto-specific measurement.

Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo's co-chief executive, is the named voice on the Waymo side. Laura Dottori-Attanasio, chief executive of Element Fleet Management, and Michelle McQuigge, chief executive of BALANCE for Blind Adults, are quoted in support.

Ontario decides, and Toronto's mayor has set a condition

The post says nothing about regulation. Reporting from April 13 by CP24 and CTV News Toronto fills the gap: Mayor Olivia Chow's office said Waymo had told City Hall it planned to apply to Ontario's automated vehicle pilot, and that the province, not the city, regulates driverless cars.

Pilot participants must report collisions within 10 days and carry enough insurance to operate in Ontario, according to that report. A spokesperson for the mayor's office said any move toward autonomous vehicles "must not put people out of work or undermine workers' livelihoods" and that the mayor will not support Waymo if it costs jobs.

Toronto has a poor record with pilots. CP24 reported that Magna was accepted into the provincial pilot in 2025 over the city's opposition and that the test ended a few months later. A 2021 self-driving shuttle service was cancelled the same year after a collision and the shutdown of its supplier.

Waymo's post does not say whether it has applied to the pilot, or whether it has been accepted. Robotaxi claims elsewhere have needed the same scrutiny, as the site's piece on Tesla's remote-operator crash record shows.

What to watch

The next checkable event is not a launch but a filing: a provincial pilot acceptance naming Waymo, or a confirmation that none has been sought. Until one exists, 2028 is a target. Compare it with Rivian, whose own point-to-point autonomy programme is still in early access under NDA.