I’ve seen them. You probably have too.

The white Jaguars gliding through San Francisco, LA, Austin, and soon Atlanta with their roof-mounted LIDARs spinning like digital lighthouses. No driver. No drama. Just quiet precision. Maybe you’ve ridden in one. Maybe you ride with Waymo daily. At first, they felt like novelties — strange guests in the choreography of human traffic.

But now? They’re just part of the city.

Waymo isn’t testing anymore. It’s integrating.

While the rest of the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry struggles with collapse and organizational trouble, Waymo is laying down a different kind of claim — not through hype or hardware, but through presence. Street by street. Dataset by dataset. Not just a fleet, but a fabric. Not a product. A protocol.

It’s no longer about winning the AV race. Waymo is becoming the street-level operating system of American cities.

Being born in the Bay, San Francisco holds a special place in Waymo's heart, and it’s mostly covered. I’ve watched Waymos navigate stop signs, tight alleys, even the chaos of San Francisco during rush hour. They don’t turn heads anymore — and that’s the signal.

Nearly 90% of the San Francisco Bay Area is live. The rollout has expanded across the South Bay and East Bay. Waymo vehicles have now driven over 35 million autonomous miles — not in simulation, but on real streets, with real stakes. And now, the company is deploying through an unlikely channel: Uber.

Just a few years ago, the two companies were locked in a bitter legal battle over intellectual property theft — a lawsuit that became a defining case in the early AV industry. Today, they’re partners. The collaboration — set to launch in Austin and Atlanta in early 2025. By taking advantage of into Uber’s demand layer, Waymo becomes the invisible infrastructure beneath the interface, slipping into existing mobility habits without asking users to change a thing.

Waymo’s integration into the Uber app shows how autonomy can slip seamlessly into existing mobility habits — no new interface, no behavior change. Courtesy of Waymo.

But the digital layer is only one front. Waymo is also embedding itself in the physical choreography of cities — not just on roads, but in the nodes where movement converges.

I used to think airports were some of the most human-centric spaces in any city. But when Waymo began mapping San Francisco International Airport, I started to see it differently: infrastructure doesn’t care who’s using it — it adapts to whoever can navigate it best.

Waymo’s long-awaited expansion to SFO is about more than just pickups and drop-offs. It’s a proof of concept — a signal that autonomous systems can operate in some of the most complex, tightly constrained environments we’ve built. When SFO announced on X that Waymo was mapping its roadways, it quietly marked a shift: from street-level autonomy to systems-level infrastructure.

A Waymo Jaguar I-PACE mapping SFO Airport. Courtesy of San Francisco International Airport (@flySFO via X)

If Waymo can work at SFO — reliably, repeatedly — it’s not just about driving. It’s about coordinating within high-friction environments where timing, traffic, security, and human flow all converge.

By doing so, Waymo isn’t just expanding coverage. It’s proving that autonomy can scale into the messy, layered realities of real-world infrastructure — from airport loops to university campuses to whatever comes next.

But not all troubles come from complexity. Sometimes, it emerges from the everyday.

In 2024, Waymo’s vehicles received 589 parking tickets in San Francisco, totaling over $65,000 in fines. On the surface, it’s almost amusing — until you realize these are the stress points where a legal system built for human intuition meets a machine programmed to never make mistakes.

Waymo’s response wasn’t flashy. It involved addressing parking challenges by understanding parking signs and collaborating with city officials. However, the company is still working on fully resolving these issues, which often arise from practical decisions like dropping passengers in loading zones due to congested roads or distant alternatives. This is what integration actually looks like — slow, bureaucratic, and deeply infrastructural. The kind of work that turns autonomy from spectacle into public utility.

Waymo isn’t loud. It doesn’t demand attention. But I keep noticing them — the quiet white cars with their spinning sensors, moving steadily through the city. Not testing. Driving. Observing. Adapting. Logging.

At some point, we stopped noticing them. They no longer stood out.

Autonomy won’t arrive with a bang. It will arrive like this — street by street, until it’s woven so deeply into the fabric of the city that it can’t be unspooled.

Waymo may not sell the flashiest tech. But it might end up owning the infrastructure that moves us all.

About the Author

Jason Lu is the founder of Intersect, an independent research initiative exploring long-horizon change across science, markets, and infrastructure. He writes about emerging systems and the subtle ways technology reshapes the physical world.

You can find him on 𝕏 @jiazelu and on LinkedIn.