Waymo robotaxis are heading to Philadelphia and NYC

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company, has initiated “road trips” to Philadelphia and New York City as part of its efforts to expand into Northeastern U.S. markets. These road trips involve deploying a small fleet of human-driven vehicles equipped with Waymo’s self-driving technology to map and test the cities’ complex driving environments. In Philadelphia, Waymo plans to operate vehicles across diverse neighborhoods and challenging areas such as downtown and freeways. In New York City, the company will manually drive cars in Manhattan, parts of Downtown Brooklyn, and nearby New Jersey cities like Jersey City and Hoboken, although it has not yet received regulatory approval to test fully autonomous vehicles there. While these exploratory trips do not guarantee an immediate commercial launch, they serve as critical data-gathering and AI refinement phases that have previously led to service rollouts, such as in Los Angeles. However, regulatory hurdles remain significant, especially in NYC, where current laws prohibit deploying driverless vehicles without a human in the front