Remember when self-driving cars felt like something we’d only see in sci-fi movies? Yeah, me too. But here we are in late 2025, and the future just pulled up outside my window—quietly, smoothly, and without a human behind the wheel.
This morning, Waymo dropped another bombshell that honestly shouldn’t surprise anyone anymore, yet somehow still does. They’re sending human-driven test vehicles into three brand-new cities: Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Starting this week.
That’s right—three cities known for hills, snow, and weather that makes even seasoned human drivers sweat are about to become the latest proving grounds for fully autonomous ride-hailing.
Waymo’s Quiet Conquest of America
Let’s be real for a second. While the rest of the tech world argues about AI chatbots and robot dogs, Waymo has been methodically, almost boringly, taking over American streets one city at a time. And somehow, that boring consistency is exactly what makes them terrifyingly effective.
The numbers don’t lie. They now have some form of presence—either commercial service, upcoming launches, or active testing—in 26 metropolitan areas. Twenty-six. That’s more than most traditional ride-hailing companies managed in their first decade.
But this latest announcement feels different. These aren’t sun-drenched California suburbs or flat Phoenix grid systems anymore. We’re talking about real winter cities with real weather challenges.
Why These Three Cities Actually Matter
Pittsburgh isn’t just some random dot on the map for autonomous vehicle companies. This city has history. It was here that Uber’s self-driving program cut its teeth years ago, and where Carnegie Mellon has been pumping out robotics PhDs for decades.
Then there’s Baltimore—port city, complex urban layout, and weather that can flip from 70 degrees to sleet in the same afternoon. And St. Louis? Try driving over those brick streets in freezing rain while dodging the Arch traffic patterns.
These aren’t cherry-picked easy markets. These are stress tests.
“We’re starting with trusted testers manually driving our vehicles to learn the roads, traffic patterns, and local driving behaviors.”
– Waymo spokesperson, December 2025
Translation: They’re doing the hard, unsexy work of teaching their system how to handle the chaos of real American cities in actual winter conditions.
The Snow Test Nobody Talks About
Here’s what fascinates me most. For years, the big question hanging over robotaxis was winter. Could these systems really handle snow-covered lane markings? Black ice? That moment when a blizzard reduces visibility to twenty feet?
Most companies avoided the question by sticking to Phoenix and Austin. Waymo already has significant operations in Detroit (through their partnership with Magna for manufacturing) and now they’re going straight for the challenging Northeast and Midwest markets.
This feels deliberate. Almost like they’re trying to remove the last major criticism of autonomous vehicles—that they only work in perfect weather.
- Pittsburgh averages 41 inches of snow annually
- Baltimore gets surprise ice storms that shut down cities
- St. Louis has seen 20-inch snowfalls in single events
These aren’t gentle dusting cities. These are places where “wintry mix” is a legitimate weather term that strikes fear into commuters.
The Competition Is Watching Very Closely
Make no mistake—this expansion comes at a specific moment. Amazon’s Zoox just started giving free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Tesla launched their supervised ride-hailing in Austin with actual human safety drivers still in the vehicles.
Meanwhile, Waymo is already doing hundreds of thousands of fully driverless paid trips every week across five major metro areas. They’re not playing catch-up. They’re extending their lead.
Over 250,000 paid trips per week now. Let that sink in. That’s not testing. That’s a legitimate transportation network operating at scale.
From Manual Mapping to Driverless Reality
The process is familiar to anyone who’s followed Waymo’s playbook. First come the human-driven vehicles with Waymo’s sensor suite, collecting millions of miles of detailed mapping data. Then employees start riding as passengers. Then trusted testers. Then public access.
We’ve seen this movie before in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta. Each time, the timeline from “manual driving” to “fully driverless commercial service” keeps getting shorter.
In Phoenix, it took years. In Los Angeles, it took months. These new cities? My guess is we’ll see driverless operations within 18-24 months, possibly sooner if the data collection goes smoothly.
What This Means for Regular People
Let’s talk about the human impact, because that’s ultimately what matters.
Imagine being in Pittsburgh next winter, it’s 2 AM, snowing heavily, and you need to get home from the airport. Instead of praying you find an Uber willing to brave the weather, or paying surge pricing that makes your eyes water, you open an app and a warm, empty vehicle pulls up precisely when promised.
No small talk required. No worrying about whether the driver knows the best route through the snow. Just reliable transportation that shows up regardless of conditions.
That’s the promise. And increasingly, it’s not science fiction anymore.
The Bigger Picture
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Waymo’s expansion isn’t the technology itself anymore—it’s the normalization. Robotaxis are becoming infrastructure, like buses or trains.
They’re already on freeways in multiple cities. They’re partnering with Uber to expand reach. They’re adding cities faster than most people can keep track of.
This isn’t a pilot program anymore. This is the largest deployment of fully autonomous vehicles in human history, happening right now, expanding aggressively while competitors are still figuring out basic operations.
And honestly? The pace is accelerating.
Just in the past month they’ve announced manual operations starting in Minneapolis, Tampa, New Orleans, and now these three additional cities. They’re planning 2026 launches in Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.
This feels less like incremental progress and more like the moment when the dam breaks.
The future of transportation isn’t coming. For hundreds of thousands of people every week, it’s already here. And it’s about to get a lot colder—and more interesting.
I’ve been following autonomous vehicles for years, and I have to say—this particular expansion feels like a turning point. When robotaxis can reliably operate through a Pittsburgh winter, the last major technical criticism falls away.
We’re not talking about whether this technology works anymore. We’re talking about when it becomes the default way millions of Americans get around.
And from where I’m sitting, that “when” just moved a lot closer to “now.”
