Atlas record: https://www.aitimeline.dev/en/events/evt-0303/
Milestone · June 25, 2024
Waymo opens San Francisco
Waymo removed the waiting list in San Francisco: anyone in the city could call a car with no driver. About 300 thousand people had been queuing before that.
Why it matters
A driverless ride stopped being a demonstration and became an ordinary service in a dense old city.
Phoenix, where the service opened four years earlier, is a city of wide straight streets and rare rain. San Francisco is the opposite: steep hills, fog, tram tracks, cyclists, lorries stopped in the second lane. Getting through it meant showing the system handles ordinary urban mess rather than a test track. Rides ran with nobody in the cabin, around the clock. The city government had no power to forbid it, since licences are issued by the state, and that became a dispute between the city and California in its own right.
Event record
- Event date
- June 25, 2024
- Timeline date
- Event date
- Verification
- Sources gathered automatically · September 18, 2026
- Lines
- ID
- evt-0303
Announcement of 25 June 2024.
Related events
Earlier
Later
- Related Tesla reaches the streets of Austin 2025links to this record
A different approach to the same problem: cameras and one network against lidar and maps.
- Extends Freeways 2025links to this record
The same service, now on freeways as well.
- Related Waymo at San Francisco airport 2026links to this record
Eighteen months from opening the city to everyone to entering its airport.
- Related California permits Nuro passenger pilots with a driver 2026links to this record
Both concern passenger rides in autonomous cars in California: the Waymo record describes driverless rides for anyone in San Francisco, this one Nuro's pilot with a driver and no fares.