Waymo Toronto

ICYMI: Waymo was given approval to participate in Ontario's Automated Vehicle Pilot Program.

Waymo announced the launch of its robotaxi service in Toronto, with the first passengers hailing rides sometime in 2028.

Waymo will start by using its vehicles, with drivers behind the wheel, to map out Toronto’s streets.

Testing of their AV fleet across the Greater Toronto Area follows thereafter.

Toronto-based Element Fleet Management will handle charging, cleaning and maintenance of Waymo vehicles.

The announcement provides no details on the number of robotaxis being deployed, the service area map, fares, or future arrangements for either Pearson or the Island Airports.

It also gives no date for public driverless testing.

Suspiciously, Ontario's current AV pilot ends on October 13, 2027, before Waymo's intended passenger launch.

Toronto says it has no bylaw specifically governing automated vehicles.

There are some roadblocks to cross before Waymo can win the hearts and minds of Toronto commuters.

How Waymo plans to tackle Toronto’s snow-covered winter streets is unclear.

In preparation for more wintery cities, Waymo logged tens of thousands of miles of snowy-weather testing in October 2025 in locations including Upstate New York and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Its sixth-generation Driver combines cameras, LIDAR, and imaging radar and is being deployed on both the Zeekr-built Ojai vans and the Hyundai IONIQ 5 SUVs.

Heated cleaning systems on their latest hardware stack help keep sensors clear of snow and ice.

The latest versions of the Driver software adjust speed, acceleration, and braking when it detects slippery road conditions.

Toronto-specific operating limits for snow, ice, and visibility have not been disclosed.

But this is likely why Waymo is giving itself two years to gauge how its operations might fare in a Canadian winter.

Waymo is expanding aggressively.

They listed 15 US markets where it serves riders, with London and Tokyo listed as coming soon.

TechCrunch reported approximately 4,000 robotaxis and 500,000 paid rides per week on September 24.

The fleet number is an external estimate, not an audited count of cars completing paid trips.

How is Waymo faring against other Robotaxi competitors worldwide?

Let’s take a look.

Most of these driverless services operate at Level 4, within defined roads and conditions.

None has demonstrated Level 5 service covering every condition a “competent” human driver could handle.

And none of these companies have successfully conquered snowy driving conditions.

Many reports show Waymo vehicles behaving weirdly in the wild.

Waymos have stopped in construction zones before. In March 2023, a vehicle stopped among cones and signs on 16th Street in San Francisco, blocking a 22 Muni bus. Passengers got off the bus. No collision or injury was reported. The San Francisco Standard reported the incident.

In April 2024, six Waymos ended up in a closed area near a San Francisco Highway 101 on-ramp. The lead vehicle entered the cone-blocked closure, and five more followed. Waymo said its roadside team cleared the vehicles and the lanes within 30 minutes. The San Francisco Standard reported no crash or injury.

Phoenix produced two different kinds of weird. An empty Waymo hit a wooden utility pole while making a low-speed pull-over in May 2024, leading to NHTSA Recall 24E-049. A month later, another vehicle entered an oncoming lane and ran a red light before police stopped it. Waymo blamed inconsistent construction signage, according to The Arizona Republic.

The biggest confirmed pattern came in spring 2026. Waymo's recall record documents 13 freeway-construction events in Phoenix and the Bay Area. Vehicles drove past ramp-closure signs or between cones marking active work areas. Waymo restricted freeway driving and filed Recall 26E-035 covering 3,871 fifth-generation ADS units. The filing describes increased collision potential but no crashes or injuries in those 13 events.

Emergency scenes have exposed another boundary. During San Francisco's December 2025 power outage, a disabled Waymo stopped an ambulance. An SFMTA filing, prepared with SFFD, SFDEM, and SFPD records, documents a 40-minute delay in the ambulance's arrival. It does not report the patient's condition or a resulting injury. The municipal filing is here.

In Austin, a Waymo briefly interfered with an ambulance responding to a mass shooting in March 2026. A police officer moved the car into a garage. EMS said the incident had no significant impact on patient care or overall response operations, according to Axios.

In Dallas, body-camera footage showed a constable manually moving an empty Waymo near a fatal apartment fire in May 2026 after remote-assistance efforts. Waymo said the vehicle was completing a three-point turn, yielding to traffic, and that the street remained passable. The reporting does not establish a delay in response or an injury caused by the vehicle. KERA published the footage and Waymo's response.

These are documented events, not a fleetwide failure rate.

They do show a recurring operational problem: temporary traffic controls, emergency scenes, blocked sightlines, and unusual roadside objects can cause a driverless vehicle to stop, choose the wrong path, or take too long to clear. The record supports a boundary.

It does not prove that every traffic jam, viral video or awkward stop was caused by the Waymo Driver.

Since inception, Google and Waymo’s primary argument for the need for self-driving or driverless vehicles has been the assumption that machines can do it better. Roads would be safer if we removed humans from the equation.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) dug up some supporting data. After examining approximately 50 million miles of Waymo driverless driving data from 2021–2024, they found that across four US markets, Waymo’s driverless cars were involved in fewer crashes than human-driven cars.

Waymo is currently winning.

They have the most vehicles on the road.

They have the most road miles under their virtual belts.

And they are working on how to address the most complex road and weather conditions.

But Baidu's ride volume and WeRide's paid services outside China may give Waymo a run for its money.

Back home in Toronto, I care more about Waymo’s winter capability than the global fleet count.

Toronto’s streetcars and streetcar tracks, light rail transit, bike lanes, cycling commuters, e-bike delivery riders, snow- and ice-covered streets, and routinely blocked transit and courier drop-off and pick-up locations will create some new challenges for the Waymo Driver.

Sure, other North American cities have complex driving ecosystems as well. But add an overnight dump of 46 centimetres of snow, and I’m not convinced Waymo can handle the task just yet.

But if any company can get robotaxis on Toronto streets, Google and Waymo are the most likely candidates.

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