Where Robotaxis Operate in Late 2026 — and How the Services Differ

How to read this guide. Squadron Robot has not ridden these services for this article and has not audited any operator’s safety case. City coverage changes. Confirm availability and whether a human is in the vehicle in the official app for the city you are in. Company safety statistics are the companies’ own, produced with a stated methodology; they are not our measurements.

“Can I take a robotaxi?” is three questions pretending to be one. Is there a service in this city? Is the ride actually driverless, or is a safety monitor still in the car? And is the operator still in business?

In November 2026 those answers differ sharply by company.

Waymo: the operator with a public safety data hub

Alphabet’s Waymo is the U.S. operator that currently publishes the most detailed public safety-impact data. On its official Safety Impact hub, Waymo reports that through June 2026 it had driven 271.3 million rider-only miles — miles without a human driver — in the cities covered by that dashboard. The miles table on that page lists:

• Phoenix, 92.121 million
• San Francisco Bay Area, 82.421 million
• Los Angeles, 67.098 million
• Austin, 21.064 million
• Atlanta, 8.624 million

The same hub compares rider-only crash rates to human benchmarks on surface streets and reports, for all of those locations combined, substantially lower rates of serious-injury-or-worse crashes, injury-causing crashes, and airbag-deployment crashes than the human benchmarks Waymo constructed. Waymo also describes the limits of that comparison: police-reported human data and Standing General Order AV data are not a perfect apples-to-apples match; some human crashes go unreported; and the company adjusts benchmarks for where it actually drives. The methodology, data downloads, and peer-reviewed papers are linked from the same page. That transparency is real, and it is still Waymo marking its own homework — which is why the company invites outside researchers to reuse the public files.

Two warnings about city lists. First, the safety hub’s statistical tables are built around those five areas (and they are current through June 2026 on the page we cited). Second, Waymo has continued to announce service in additional metros after that snapshot. Press reports in 2026 described further openings and, in some cities, service through the Uber app. Those expansions may be real and still not appear in the June safety tables. The only authoritative answer to “does Waymo pick up here, this week?” is the Waymo app (or Uber, where that partnership is offered), not a blog post — including this one.

Tesla Robotaxi: a widening footprint, with an important open question

Tesla has been building a robotaxi service using its own app, and it has been adding Texas and Florida cities in 2026. On 9 November 2026, the day before this article was published, TechCrunch reported that Tesla said robotaxis would become available in San Antonio that morning, in a city where Waymo already operated (TechCrunch, 9 November 2026).

Tesla also publishes rider-facing materials, including a first-responder interaction plan and other official robotaxi documents. What Tesla has been less precise about, in public, is the mix of supervised and unsupervised cars in each city. Reporting on the service has described some markets in which safety monitors are still present, and California rules that require a safety driver in Bay Area operations. Tesla has not, in the materials we reviewed, published a simple official table of “this city is fully driverless; this city is not.” Until it does, a Tesla robotaxi pickup is not automatically the same product as a Waymo rider-only trip. Ask what the app and the car itself tell you, in that city, on that day.

Tesla also offers official video of its humanoid program and of the Cybercab unveil on its YouTube channel; those are product demonstrations, not a city-coverage map. For coverage, start with Tesla’s robotaxi surfaces and the city’s transportation rules.

Zoox, Cruise, and everyone else

Amazon’s Zoox has been running a distinctive, purpose-built vehicle without a steering wheel, with official journal posts describing testing and ride programs in cities such as Las Vegas and San Francisco. Terms vary (paid rides versus waitlisted or employee-family programs) and should be read on Zoox’s own site, not assumed from a screenshot.

GM’s Cruise, once the other household name in U.S. robotaxis, is no longer operating a public robotaxi service after GM wound the robotaxi business down in late 2024. If a friend still talks about “taking a Cruise,” they are out of date. GM has discussed autonomous features for personal vehicles on a later time frame; that is not a Cruise relaunch.

Outside the United States, services such as Baidu’s Apollo Go operate in Chinese cities and have been reported in places such as Dubai, often under local rules and sometimes in partnership with conventional ride-hail apps. This article does not attempt a worldwide inventory.

How the services differ, when they coexist

Where more than one operator is live, the differences that actually affect a rider are mundane and important:

• Booking app. Waymo’s app, Uber in some Waymo cities, Tesla’s Robotaxi app, Zoox’s app. You cannot assume they are interchangeable.
• Service area. Two operators in the same city can have different geofences — as San Antonio press coverage of airport access illustrated.
• Human in the vehicle. Fully rider-only, mixed, or always supervised.
• Vehicle type. A modified passenger car, a purpose-built pod, or a two-seat special vehicle is a different ride, with different luggage and accessibility limits.
• What they publish on safety. Waymo’s public hub is currently in a class of its own. “We are safe” without a methodology is a weaker statement.

For what to do once you have a ride, see what to know before you ride a robotaxi.