For Australians planning a trip to the United States, a Waymo robotaxi ride has become one of the most talked-about travel experiences of 2026. What was once the exclusive domain of tech journalists and early adopters is now available to anyone visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and eight other US cities — as well as London and Tokyo.
Here is everything you need to know before you climb into a fully autonomous vehicle for the very first time.
What Is Waymo One?
Waymo One is the world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week and open to the general public without any waitlist or special qualification. Launched commercially by Waymo — a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company — it has accumulated more than 200 million miles of real-world autonomous driving across its operating markets.
The service currently operates in 11 US cities: Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Atlanta. International services run in Tokyo and London. Waymo has confirmed expansion into more than 20 additional cities, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York and Washington DC.
For Australians, this means a Waymo ride is now accessible on a US West Coast trip, a Texas or Florida holiday or a stop in the American South — with considerably more cities joining throughout 2026 and beyond.
What the Ride Itself Is Like
Waymo currently operates its commercial fleet using the Jaguar I-PACE — a fully electric SUV with a comfortable interior that seats up to four passengers. Once you are moving, a passenger screen in the vehicle displays your planned route and — uniquely — shows what the Waymo Driver artificial intelligence sees: the surrounding environment rendered in real time, with pedestrians labelled as shapes, road signs highlighted and the vehicle’s intended path shown as an animated line ahead.
Music is available. The vehicle accelerates gradually, follows the speed of surrounding traffic and brakes smoothly well in advance of intersections. Passengers generally find the experience unremarkable after the first few minutes — which is, in many ways, precisely the point. There is no steering wheel intervention, no safety driver and no human override. The Waymo Driver operates fully autonomously from the moment the doors close.
An emergency stop button is accessible inside the vehicle. If activated, the Waymo pulls over safely and holds position.
The Technology Making It All Work
What makes a Waymo ride feel uneventful is the sophistication of the system running beneath it. The Waymo Driver uses 29 cameras mounted around the vehicle to provide complete 360-degree visual coverage, paired with LiDAR — laser sensors that create a detailed three-dimensional picture of the surroundings in all lighting conditions — and radar, which measures the distance and speed of objects even in rain or fog.
Onboard computing hardware processes data from every sensor simultaneously and in real time. The system works in four stages: it draws on pre-mapped territory data covering every lane, sign and crosswalk in its service area; identifies all nearby pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles and obstacles through perception AI; predicts how every surrounding road user is likely to move; and then plans the optimal path, speed and steering input for the moments ahead. This is supported by more than 20 billion simulated miles of additional training — a figure that allows the system to prepare for scenarios not yet encountered on real roads.
For a deeper look at how this technology compares to what is coming to Australia, see our guide on how robotaxi technology works.
How Safe Is It?
The data is compelling. According to Waymo’s published safety research, the Waymo Driver has achieved 92% fewer serious injury crashes, 83% fewer airbag deployment crashes and 82% fewer injury-causing crashes compared to human driver benchmarks across equivalent conditions. For vulnerable road users, the figures show 92% fewer pedestrian injury crashes and 85% fewer cyclist injury crashes.
An independent assessment by Swiss Re — one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies — confirmed 92% fewer bodily injury claims and 88% fewer property damage claims over 25 million miles. The FIA Road Safety Index has awarded Waymo its 3-star rating, the highest available, for adherence to Vision Zero best practices.
For Australians who have followed the broader autonomous vehicle safety debate, riding in a Waymo puts those statistics into direct personal context. The vehicle does not speed, does not run amber lights and does not take the calculated risks that a fatigued or distracted human driver might. It also responds consistently — not variably — to every situation it encounters.
When Will Australians Be Able to Ride at Home?
That is the question underpinning much of the interest in experiencing a Waymo abroad. Australia’s National Transport Commission is actively developing the regulatory framework for fully autonomous vehicles, and the operators now proving their technology at scale in the US, Japan and Europe are the same companies most likely to shape Australia’s own autonomous transport landscape.
Understanding what the experience is actually like — the in-vehicle environment and the sensation of travelling without a driver — gives Australians a concrete frame of reference for following that conversation. For a look at realistic timelines, see when Australian robotaxis might hit the road and which Australian cities are most prepared.
The global operators building toward that future are profiled in our Global Operators overview — including Waymo’s own expansion into London and Tokyo and the rapid growth of autonomous services across Asia-Pacific that brings the technology closer to Australia with every passing month. For context on the insurance and liability frameworks being built around these services, and how these vehicles handle unexpected situations, those articles are worth reading alongside this one.
