Key facts
- Amazon's Zoox is expanding its driverless ride-hailing operations to Houston and San Diego.
- Alphabet's Waymo is expanding its fully autonomous ride service to Denver, San Diego, and Tampa.
- Zoox began paid services in Las Vegas in August.
- Waymo is also expanding its services overseas, with planned testing in Munich.
Amazon's Zoox and Alphabet's Waymo have separately announced expansions of their driverless ride-hailing operations into new U.S. cities. Zoox stated it would begin testing in Houston and San Diego, bringing its presence to 12 U.S. locations. The company will initially use retrofitted test vehicles for manual mapping and testing before deploying its purpose-built driverless robotaxis. Zoox's commercial launch has intensified competition with Waymo and Tesla as companies race to scale autonomous ride-hailing in the U.S.