Getting a driverless car ride in Dallas used to mean joining a line. As of Tuesday, August 4, 2026, the line is gone.
Waymo, the self-driving company owned by Alphabet, said anyone in Dallas can now download the Waymo app and request a ride.
Robotaxis are what they sound like: cars that pick you up with no driver inside. You open the app, choose a ride, and the car shows up on its own.
The move had been building for a while. Waymo started testing on Dallas streets a year ago, and its target was to have the service running sometime in 2026.
Public rides started slowly. February opened the service to people who signed up, and demand poured in: roughly 150,000 people booked rides through the app in the early-access period.
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Then came May. Waymo paused service in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Atlanta after its robotaxis struggled with heavy rain and flooded streets.
Those cities have service back now, but Waymo says severe weather can still force a pause. Flood warnings or live road conditions can cause the company to adjust or suspend rides, and the Waymo app is where riders will see the latest status.
The weather pause did not stop the rollout. Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all saw Waymo start with a waitlist and then open up.
Dallas is following the same route.
There is one place a Dallas robotaxi will not take you just yet: Dallas Love Field Airport. Waymo is still testing its autonomous vehicles there, and the company said it expects airport service soon, without giving a date.
When airport rides do start, the cars will have some behind-the-scenes help. Waymo has said Avis Budget Group, the rental-car company, will manage the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace fleet.
Avis handles the depot work, charging, and maintenance while Waymo focuses on the self-driving software.
Each new city makes the service feel less like a tech demo and more like something real. For people who own Alphabet stock, the bigger picture is worth watching.
Waymo is moving from an experiment to a service people can actually book, and it is building the playbook to do it again in more places. The May pause is a reminder that the road will not always be smooth, but the company is staying flexible instead of stopping.
The bottom line: driverless cars are getting easier to try, and the technology behind them is getting harder to ignore. The next time the map in your app shows a car with no one behind the wheel, you will know a lot changed to make that happen.
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