What it means
Waymo is the driverless car. In Scottsdale the word means one specific sight: a white electric SUV with a spinning sensor dome on the roof and cameras at every corner, pulling up outside a restaurant on a weeknight with the steering wheel turning on its own. Locals say “I’ll grab a Waymo” the way they say “I’ll grab an Uber,” and visitors tend to film their first ride.
The cars belong to Waymo, the self-driving company that grew out of Google’s 2009 project and is now part of Alphabet. Metro Phoenix was where it tested for years and where it opened the world’s first fully driverless ride-hail service to the public, so the Valley has had robotaxis longer than almost anywhere. Scottsdale joined the map in 2023, starting with Old Town.
For a visitor the practical meaning is a third option between a rental car and a human-driven rideshare. Inside the service area it works like any ride-hail app. Outside it, at a North Scottsdale trailhead at dawn, for instance, it may not exist. The getting-around guide explains why a car still wins for the desert.
Where you’ll meet it
Outside the bars in the nightlife guide; in the pickup lanes at Sky Harbor; around Talking Stick and the ballpark at Salt River Fields in March; and at four-way stops all over central Scottsdale.
Where the word came from
Google started its self-driving car project on January 17, 2009, in its X lab, and the project later became Waymo, a name this site has found no documented etymology for beyond the company’s marketing. In the Valley the word arrived as testing did: minivans in Chandler first, then, in October 2017, minivans on Chandler’s public roads with nobody behind the wheel, and Phoenix streets the next month. Waymo One, the public service, launched in December 2018 with safety drivers on some rides, and on October 8, 2020 it became the first commercial robotaxi service anywhere to run without them.
Scottsdale came next. On May 4, 2023 Waymo doubled its Valley service area to 180 square miles, which it called the largest fully autonomous service area in the world, and named “Old Town Scottsdale’s shopping, entertainment, historic and arts districts” among the additions. In June 2024 it added 90 more square miles, including Talking Stick Resort, TPC Scottsdale and Salt River Fields, through a partnership with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community; KTAR reported it as the autonomous ride-hail industry’s first entry onto tribal land.
The name has since become an ordinary noun: around Old Town the cars are simply Waymos, and “grab a Waymo” needs no explanation.
What it is not
Waymo is not Tesla’s driver-assistance system, not a car you can buy, and not a human rideshare with a fancy roof. It is also not everywhere: the service area is a defined map, and an address a block outside it gets no ride.
The fine print
The service area is the rule that matters, and it moves. As of Waymo’s August 13, 2026 announcement, the Valley footprint passed 350 square miles across parts of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert, and Axios reported it covers Scottsdale between State Route 51 and the Loop 101. The company says it serves Sky Harbor and the Scottsdale Airpark and that Mesa Gateway is next, which it says would give Phoenix the most Waymo airport access in the world.
Freeways are newer. Waymo began offering freeway trips around Phoenix in November 2025, paused them for about two months in 2026 for software updates, and resumed in July. Most Scottsdale trips still run on surface streets.
The airport history has two dates in circulation: Wikipedia gives November 1, 2022, and local reports say service began in December 2022 at the 44th Street Sky Train station, before expanding to the 24th Street station and terminal curbs in December 2023. The cars run around the clock, according to Waymo’s help pages. Fleet vehicles are mainly Jaguar I-Pace SUVs, with a newer Zeekr-built model arriving. If you have a question about a specific address, the app’s map, not any guide, is the authority.