Overview

• Waymo kicked off its Philadelphia road-trip testing on July 7, deploying a limited fleet of human-driven, sensor-equipped vehicles across downtown, freeways and neighborhoods from North Central to Eastwick.
• The road-trip program is designed to feed real-world mapping and performance data into the autonomous system to adapt to local traffic patterns and infrastructure.
• In New York City, Waymo is conducting preliminary manual drives from north of Central Park to Battery Park and mapping Jersey City and Hoboken while awaiting approval for human-supervised autonomous trials.
• Pennsylvania regulations permit conditional driverless tests under human oversight, but New York law mandates a human specialist in the front seat—a requirement Waymo is lobbying to amend.
• Previous road-trip tours have preceded commercial launches in markets such as Los Angeles, and Waymo plans public robotaxi services in Miami later this year and Washington, D.C. by 2026.