Waymo plans to test its autonomous vehicles on public roads in Australia later this year. The company is reportedly in talks with the federal government about starting trials.
Accordingly The sizzleWaymo – owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google – has already held meetings with federal government representatives this year to discuss testing its autonomous cars on public roads.
The company reportedly held a private preliminary meeting with Federal Transport Minister Catherine King as part of the process.
There is no exact information about where and when Waymo will launch on local streets, as the service is already being tested outside its US base in cities such as London and Tokyo.
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“While we are committed to making Waymo Driver available to more people in more places, we currently have no specific plans or timeline for the future of Waymo in Australia,” a Waymo spokesperson said The sizzle.
This follows confirmation from Transport for NSW in 2025 that talks were planned with Waymo to discuss its future in Australia.
Waymo, based in Silicon Valley, California, was founded in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project before rebranding to Waymo in 2016.
Waymo has been involved in a number of widespread incidents in which its vehicles drove passengers into a standoff with police, drove the wrong way down a street, made an illegal U-turn in full view of police, and blocked a dead-end street. Waymo robotaxis have also been blamed for hitting a dog, running over a cat and hitting a cyclist.
Still, it performed better than Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous vehicle division, which had its operating license revoked by the US state of California in 2023 before GM canceled the project entirely the following year, costing the company billions.
A September 2025 study by iSelect found that almost half of the 500 people surveyed in Australia were against the idea of fully autonomous cars in their region.
The Australian government is expected to announce a new Automated Vehicle Safety Law (AVSL) in 2027 that will provide a national framework for autonomous vehicles.
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