Waymo Begins Airport Robotaxi Service At San Antonio International

Waymo began serving San Antonio International Airport on Tuesday, offering curbside drop-offs at terminals and pickups from the airport’s designated ride-hail zone as it expands its automated taxi network in Texas.

The release marks the first airport in the state where Waymo will operate, even though the company already runs services across four Texas metropolitan areas: San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston. The vehicles will use the airport’s established rideshare lot for passenger retrieval, a model Waymo has followed at larger hubs elsewhere.

Waymo opened its San Antonio service to invited riders in February and has been growing access gradually. The company says it has moved multiple tens of thousands of people on those invitation-only trips and expects to open the system to the general public soon. The careful, staged rollout mirrors the company’s earlier tactics in Dallas, Houston and Orlando as it scales. Waymo is live in 10 cities and is carrying roughly one-half million paid rides each week — about two times the weekly total it reported a year ago — and has told investors it plans to enter about 20 additional metropolitan areas this year, including overseas markets such as Tokyo and London.

The operator plans to add a new, larger vehicle built by Zeekr — the model branded Ojai — into passenger service later in the year. Waymo has circulated data it says supports the claim that its self-driving fleet reduces the frequency of severe crashes compared with human drivers. Still, regulators and local officials have flagged several safety concerns as the company scales up.

Federal investigators are examining incidents in which Waymo vehicles failed to stop for school buses loading or unloading children, and the company has rolled out software patches aimed at correcting that behavior. Local officials in Austin, where the majority of those bus-related events were reported, are working with Waymo to refine how the cars respond around stopped buses. In a separate inquiry, national safety boards are reviewing a low-speed collision in Santa Monica in which a Waymo vehicle made contact with a child; the child reportedly suffered minor injuries after the car slowed from about 17 mph to 6 mph before impact.

Waymo’s ground operations combine automated systems with human oversight. A network of remote agents based in the United States and the Philippines assist vehicles when they encounter complex or unexpected conditions, and roadside teams plus emergency responders are deployed when a vehicle becomes immobilized. “A measured expansion that pairs on-road growth with robust human support and close coordination with regulators is the most responsible path forward,” said a transportation safety analyst who reviews autonomous-vehicle deployments. For now, San Antonio’s airport launch underscores both the promise of self-driving taxis to reshape airport access and the practical hurdles companies face as they move into more complex environments.