Waymo Speeds Up

Next time you’re barreling down a highway and you get stuck behind someone driving at the speed limit, don’t honk or flash your lights. It might be a Waymo self-driving car! The Alphabet-owned robotaxi business announced Wednesday that its cars will now drive on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Phoenix, a major advance for the service. It’s a reminder that, while Elon Musk makes extravagant promises about the potential of Tesla’s robotaxi service, Waymo is actually living the dream.

Waymo has been operating in all three cities for quite a while, in addition to Atlanta and Austin, Texas, where its cars are available on the Uber service. It plans to expand to Dallas, Denver, Washington, Nashville, Tenn., Miami, San Diego and London next year, with several of those new markets operating through partners such as Avis or Lyft. That expansion should drastically accelerate the already rapid growth in paid rides. On Tuesday, Guggenheim Securities published a report partly based on new California DMV data estimating that Waymo had 4.3 million monthly rides overall in the third quarter, up from 3.5 million in the second quarter.