The empty seat is not a CES booth anymore.
On September 1, Waymo converted Denver, San Diego, and Tampa from employee pilots into paid public service. Alphabet now lists 14 U.S. metros, more than 4,000 vehicles, and about 500,000 paid rides a week. The target is a million by year-end.
Tesla is in seven metros. Six of those can run without a babysitter in the front seat. Zoox, Amazon’s toaster-shaped pod, started charging fares on the Las Vegas Strip on August 10.
If you live in one of the cities below, you can open an app and get a car with no driver. Geofences still apply. Airports and freeways are a patchwork. The ride is real.
Where You Can Hail One Today
Waymo (Waymo app, Uber in some Texas and Atlanta zones): Phoenix, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Miami, Orlando, Nashville, Denver, San Diego, Tampa.
Phoenix is the old market. The Bay Area and L.A. are the dense ones. Texas is the land grab. Denver is Colorado’s first commercial robotaxi city.
Tesla Robotaxi (Tesla app): Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, Tampa — unsupervised in reporting from Tesla’s mid-year update. San Francisco Bay Area still runs with a safety driver because California treats the service like a livery permit, not a robotaxi permit.
Austin was first, June 2025, now a couple hundred square miles. Florida lit up in July 2026.
Zoox: Paid pods in Las Vegas. Free waitlist rides in San Francisco. Testing in Austin and Miami. Supervised mapping starting in Houston and San Diego this month — not the same as hailing a fare.
Fifteen metros if you count any public driverless or paid robotaxi product: the Waymo 14 plus Las Vegas for Zoox. Tesla overlaps Texas and Florida. Bay Area is the only place all three brands show up, and Tesla is the one that still has a human in the chair.
What “Real” Still Means
You are not getting a car in Cleveland. Washington, D.C. is testing with a driver; the council clock for a real network sits in 2028. Detroit is on Waymo’s announced list for later this year. Chicago has been teased. None of that is a September hail.
Zones grow in slices. A “city” on a press release can be 60 square miles of downtown and the airport, not your suburb. Waymo paused freeway trips after construction-zone incidents, then started putting highways back in Phoenix first. Airport pickup is a political fight in every metro.
Fares are not Uber-killing yet. Tracker samples put Tesla cheaper in Austin and Waymo closer to normal ride-hail in California. The product is reliability at 1 a.m. in a mapped box, not a national network.
Cruise is not on this list. The companies taking your card in September 2026 are Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox.
Would you put your kid in the back of a Waymo in Phoenix — or are you waiting until the geofence includes your driveway?
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