Waymo Toronto Robotaxis Face 2028 Deadline With No Rulebook
By Daniel Rao There is a small scheduling problem at the heart of Waymo's big Toronto announcement. The Alphabet robotaxi unit says it wants its first paying riders in Toronto by 2028. Ontario's own programme for testing driverless cars expires on 13 October 2027 — and the province has announced no commercial rules for what comes after. So Friday's news is less a launch and more a wager: Waymo is betting the law will catch up in time. The announcement, made in a Waymo blog post titled "Hello Toronto! Waymo is En Route" on Friday, 16 October, lays out a familiar, careful playbook. Manually driven mapping vehicles will hit Toronto streets "in the coming days" to build high-definition maps. Then comes phased testing with trained autonomous specialists behind the wheel — Waymo's "rigorous, phased, safety-first approach." The specialists eventually come out of the driver's seat, and public rides follow, with the goal of welcoming the fir...