Waymo has secured its biggest regulatory green light to date. On August 14, 2026, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the Alphabet-owned company's Advice Letter No. 4, clearing paid, fully driverless robotaxi service across 18 counties stretching from Sonoma in the north to San Diego in the south.
What the CPUC Actually Approved
The approval covers 12 Northern California counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo — and six in the south, including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura. It is the first time Waymo can offer commercial rides in Sacramento and San Diego. The operating envelope is deliberately broad: freeways, city streets, rural roads, parking lots and rail crossings, at all posted speed limits, day or night, in rain, fog or hail. The only real carve-out is widespread snow or ice.
The letter was filed in January and supplemented in May with additional procedures for rider disruptions such as December's PG&E outage in San Francisco. Both the Jaguar I-PACE and Waymo's new sixth-generation Ojai robotaxi are covered.
A Fleet That Now Rivals a State
Waymo's service area passed 1,400 square miles across 11 cities in May — larger than Rhode Island — on a fleet of roughly 3,000 vehicles that has now logged more than 20 million trips. The company is targeting 1 million rides a week by year-end.
Contrast With Tesla
The approval comes as Tesla continues to run its rival "Robotaxi" service in the Bay Area with a human safety monitor in the driver's seat. In March, CPUC deputy executive director Pat Tsen said flatly that Tesla is "not operating an autonomous vehicle service," and that Tesla's charter-party carrier permit is the same one a limousine company holds.
See our earlier coverage of Waymo's Dallas launch with Avis, and Zoox's Florida operations for context on the widening AV race.
Reporting based on coverage from Electrek and the California Public Utilities Commission.