Waymo’s August 2024 Gen 6 announcement marked a turning point: instead of just refining software, the company is rolling out a new, purpose-built robotaxi platform designed from the ground up for autonomous service. That move comes as Waymo reports 127 million rider-only miles through September 2025 and faces a shifting regulatory environment that will shape how far and how fast those robotaxis spread. Waymo has framed the Gen 6 hardware as a way to cut costs while improving performance, saying the redesign lets it “focus every component on autonomous driving” rather than retrofitting human-centric cars.
The Gen 6 Hardware Leap
Waymo’s sixth-generation hardware stack moves its driverless system onto a dedicated vehicle platform with a tightly integrated sensor layout. In its technical description of the Gen 6 Waymo Driver, the company specifies 13 cameras, 4 lidar units, 6 radar sensors and external audio receivers arranged to give a continuous view around the car. Waymo describes a sensor design that can detect objects up to 500 meters away, with performance that holds in both day and night conditions and in a broader range of weather than earlier generations. That combination is meant to give the system more time to react to hazards and to handle more varied road environments without relying on a safety driver.
Waymo also presents Gen 6 as a cost play as much as a capability upgrade. By consolidating cameras, lidar and radar into a smaller number of high-performance units and integrating them directly into the vehicle body, the company says it can reduce the overall hardware bill while maintaining redundancy across sensing modes. In its own explanation, Waymo links this cost optimization to a long-term goal of making driverless rides more affordable and easier to scale across cities. The company argues that a purpose-built autonomous vehicle can be manufactured and serviced more efficiently than retrofitted cars, which could be decisive as it tries to expand beyond early launch markets.
Expansion Footprint and Partnerships
Waymo’s safety impact hub shows how much ground its driverless fleet already covers. The company reports that its vehicles have logged 127 million rider-only miles through September 2025, meaning miles driven with no human behind the wheel. That mileage is broken out by city, with exposure spread across places such as Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the service has been running in rider-only mode. The city-level breakdown is central to Waymo’s argument that its safety record should be evaluated in the context of dense urban traffic as well as more forgiving suburban routes.
Partnerships are a key part of that footprint. In Phoenix, riders can already hail a Waymo robotaxi through the Uber app integration, which lets people book a driverless ride without downloading a separate Waymo app. That tie-in gives Waymo access to an existing pool of ride-hailing users and offers a template for similar collaborations in other markets. At the same time, the company is expanding the types of roads it tackles: in California, reporting shows Waymo is testing highway segments as part of its expanded robotaxi service, a step that could significantly increase average trip lengths and operational complexity.
Safety Record and Reporting Nuances
Waymo leans heavily on its 127 million rider-only miles as evidence that its system has been exposed to real-world risk at scale. On its safety impact page, the company benchmarks its crash experience against human drivers, using a dataset that compares incidents per mile and parses severity. Those comparisons are meant to show how the Waymo Driver stacks up against typical human crash rates, with attention to injury outcomes and property damage. The same hub offers a downloadable dataset and release notes so outside researchers can examine how Waymo’s crash metrics are constructed and how they change as more miles accumulate.
Interpreting that data requires understanding how regulators define reportable events. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Standing General Order on crash reporting sets out when ADS operators such as Waymo must report crashes, which vehicles are covered and what qualifies as a reportable incident. The framework focuses on specific triggers, such as airbag deployment or a person being transported for medical care, and it limits the dataset to those events. That means SGO reports do not capture every fender bender or minor scrape, and any comparison between Waymo’s reported crashes and broader human crash statistics has to account for those thresholds and the research methods behind the dataset.
Funding and Valuation Backing
The scale of Waymo’s deployment has been underwritten by a large pool of outside capital. Reporting on the company’s latest financing describes a $16 billion funding round that significantly extends its financial runway as it ramps up robotaxi operations. That coverage presents the round as a major bet on commercial driverless services and notes that Waymo’s expansion into multiple cities and rider-only operations requires heavy spending on vehicles, mapping and support staff. The funding is framed as a way to sustain those costs while the business model shifts from pilot programs to paid rides at larger scale.
Additional financial analysis details how investors and the parent company view that spending. A separate report describes Waymo’s valuation and investor participation, tying the $16 billion raise to Alphabet’s backing and to outside investors who are effectively sharing the risk of long-term autonomy bets. That coverage also highlights operational markers such as miles driven and weekly rides, using them as yardsticks for whether the capital is translating into real-world usage. Together, these accounts show that Waymo’s robotaxis are not just a technical project but a capital-intensive transportation business built on expectations of large-scale deployment.
Regulatory Landscape Shaping Rollout
Waymo’s ability to expand its Gen 6 fleet does not depend only on technology or funding. In California, regulators have opened a new rulemaking on autonomous vehicle passenger service that sets the agenda for how robotaxis can operate. The California Public Utilities Commission describes an oversight program that looks at partnerships with carriers, shared rides, airport operations and services for unaccompanied minors, among other topics. That process signals that statewide authorities are revisiting how to integrate commercial AV services into existing transportation rules rather than treating them as one-off pilot projects.
The CPUC’s rulemaking matters because it will shape what types of trips companies like Waymo can legally offer and under what conditions. For example, questions about airport pickups, joint operations with traditional carriers and rules for minors could determine whether robotaxis become a niche downtown option or a broadly useful part of daily travel. The commission’s description of its evolving oversight emphasizes that AV passenger services sit within a wider public-transportation framework, which may lead to new reporting obligations, service standards or limits on certain types of deployments. Those regulatory choices will directly influence how quickly Waymo can roll out Gen 6 vehicles in California and potentially serve as a template for other states.
What Lies Ahead
Waymo’s Gen 6 announcement, its 127 million rider-only miles and its $16 billion funding round together suggest a company that is moving from experiment to scaled service, but the path ahead is not fully defined. Nationwide deployment timelines remain uncertain, and the regulatory processes in places like California show that policymakers are still deciding how robotaxis fit into broader mobility systems. Disputes over crash-rate interpretations also continue, with Waymo’s own benchmarks against human drivers sitting alongside NHTSA’s narrower SGO crash data, which only covers certain incidents. That tension highlights why safety claims need to be read with attention to definitions and data sources rather than treated as simple rankings.
Even with those caveats, the combination of a purpose-built Gen 6 hardware stack, expanding city footprints, app partnerships and substantial financial backing positions Waymo as a central player in the autonomous-vehicle market. The company’s own framing of the Gen 6 Waymo Driver as both a performance and cost upgrade suggests it is preparing for a long competitive race in which per-mile economics and regulatory compliance may matter as much as raw technical capability. If regulators continue to refine rules for AV passenger services and if crash data over the next tens of millions of miles align with Waymo’s current benchmarks, the impact of these robotaxis could extend well beyond Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, reshaping how people think about everyday urban transport.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
