Waymo Approved to Test Robotaxis at SFO Airport

Waymo wins permit to test robotaxis at SFO

Waymo has been granted a Testing and Operations Pilot Permit to operate its robotaxi service at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), mayoral officials announced. The approval follows years of negotiation as regulators examined whether autonomous vehicles can safely navigate the airport’s dense, chaotic environment of cars, shuttles, taxis, and pedestrians.

Waymo will introduce service at SFO in three deliberate phases that escalate risk and public exposure. The company plans to begin with supervised testing and progress to driverless trials before launching commercial trips for paying customers.

• Phase 1: Testing with a human driver on board, starting with Waymo employees.
• Phase 2: Driverless testing under the permit’s oversight.
• Phase 3: Commercial service with public pickups and drop-offs at SFO’s Kiss & Fly lot, accessible via the AirTrain.

Waymo already serves five cities but has operated at just one airport so far—Phoenix Sky Harbor. Airports are high-value targets for robotaxi operators because trips to and from airports account for an estimated one-fifth of ride-hail journeys, making them a major source of revenue and coverage for any service hoping to compete with Uber and Lyft.

The SFO permit represents both an operational milestone and a regulatory test. Airports present unique challenges: unpredictable pedestrian flows, frequent lane changes by human drivers, complex signage and temporary road configurations during construction or special events. Regulators have pushed Waymo to demonstrate reliable behavior under these messy, edge-case conditions.

For Waymo, access to SFO is also financial. Without airport trips, hard-to-service but high-value origins and destinations remain off the table, making it harder to scale revenue and approach profitability. For airports and cities, permitting autonomous services raises questions about curb management, passenger flows, equity, and how robotaxis interact with existing ground transportation operators.

What to watch next: whether Waymo’s driverless tests will handle peak-hour congestion, how the company sequences public access, and how SFO manages curb allocation. Cities and airport operators will be watching for data on wait times, lane utilization, and safety incidents that will shape future approvals and commercial terms.

At QuarkyByte we analyze moments like this by combining simulation, telemetry analysis, and staged rollout design. We help operators translate test runs into operational thresholds, curate safety metrics that satisfy regulators, and map revenue scenarios tied to airport access. For stakeholders, the SFO move signals that autonomous services are entering higher-stakes, higher-reward ground.