Waymo has completed street mapping across Charlotte, North Carolina, and moved to the next phase of testing where its sixth-generation Driver pilots the vehicle while an employee stays behind the wheel. The Alphabet-owned company confirmed the step-up to Axios roughly five months after unveiling the Charlotte expansion, keeping the market on Waymo’s familiar roughly year-long launch cadence.
What Changed This Week
Since February, Waymo’s white Jaguar I-Pace test cars have been circling Charlotte with drivers behind the wheel to build a base map of every lane, curb and traffic pattern. A spokesperson said that phase is done. The fleet has now advanced to autonomous rides with Waymo employees still monitoring the vehicle, ahead of a final phase in which employees ride as passengers with no driver in the seat.
Ojai Enters Testing
Charlotte riders are also getting their first look at Waymo’s next-generation robotaxi. Locals have spotted the light-blue Ojai, the Zeekr-built SUV that Waymo describes as a “living room on wheels” with a completely flat floor. The company would not confirm whether Ojai will replace or run alongside its Jaguars in Charlotte, but the Zeekr-based vehicle is Waymo’s reference platform for 2026 expansions into cold-weather cities and higher-throughput commercial service.
How It Fits Waymo’s U.S. Expansion
Waymo says its launches typically take about a year from initial testing to a public robotaxi. Atlanta, for example, went from testing in April 2024 to public service in June 2025. The Charlotte progression tracks a broader ramp: the company is also spinning up autonomous testing in Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego and Tampa, all of which were rolled into July’s four-city expansion announcement for Alphabet employees before a wider public opening.
Why It Matters
Charlotte is North Carolina’s largest robotaxi test bed and a bellwether for how quickly Waymo can scale beyond its coastal strongholds. With mapping done, human-supervised autonomous rides underway and a new-generation platform on the road, the company is signalling that a Queen City launch is a matter of quarters, not years — while it juggles simultaneous ramp-ups aimed at hitting a run rate of one million paid rides per week before year-end.
Reporting based on coverage from Axios Charlotte and Waymo.