Autonomous vehicle company Waymo is preparing to make its debut on the streets of New York City but not in the way many might expect. While its cars will soon begin appearing in Manhattan, each one will have a human behind the wheel for now.
The company has filed for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to manually operate its vehicles while continuing to push for changes in state laws that currently prohibit fully driverless operation. The move marks the latest milestone in Waymo’s steady expansion and its long-term goal to launch a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in the largest and most complex urban environment in the United States.
“While we won’t be in New York full-time yet, we have every intention of bringing our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to the city in the future,” the company said in a statement, emphasizing that this initial rollout is just the beginning.
Under current New York state law, autonomous vehicles cannot legally operate without a licensed human driver behind the wheel. Waymo is now actively advocating for legislative changes that would open the door to fully driverless testing and deployment in the Empire State.
If the permit is approved, this would mark the city’s first official test deployment of autonomous vehicles, signaling a significant moment for both urban mobility innovation and local regulation.
This isn’t Waymo’s first experience with New York. The company previously conducted data collection and manual driving in the city back in 2021, using those tests to refine its technology for snowy and icy conditions and to learn how its system performs in densely packed, high-traffic environments. That earlier initiative was limited in scope, with a defined start and end, but it provided valuable insights that have shaped the company’s current strategy.
In the meantime, Waymo continues to aggressively scale its operations across the country. Its ride-hailing service, Waymo One, already delivers more than 250,000 paid trips per week across cities such as Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. The company is also laying the groundwork to bring autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., starting in 2026.
