Waymo picks Toronto as its first Canadian city, riders targeted for 2028
Waymo announced Toronto on October 16 as its first Canadian market: manual mapping first, riders in 2028, while Ontario’s pilot rules expire in October 2027.
Waymo is an autonomous ride-hailing company that began as Google’s self-driving car project in 2009, started charging passengers in the US in 2020, and now completes more than 500,000 paid trips a week. On October 16, 2026, its official blog announced that it is entering Canada, starting in Toronto: Waymo vehicles appear on city streets within days, driving manually at first to build high-definition maps, with the goal of welcoming its first riders in 2028. By Electrek’s count the same day, Toronto is Waymo’s fourth announced market outside the US, after London, Tokyo and Singapore.
Key points
- Three phases: manual driving builds HD maps, then trained specialists validate the Waymo Driver from the driver’s seat, and paying riders arrive in 2028; testing typically runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Element runs the local fleet: Toronto-headquartered Element Fleet Management (TSX: EFN) handles onsite operations — charging, maintenance, cleaning, readiness and energy management. Element manages over 1.5 million vehicles globally.
- Two safety numbers, one day: the official blog says “over 400 million fully autonomous kilometres” driven and 95% fewer crashes involving serious injury or worse; Waymo’s own Canada page says 450 million kilometres and 82% fewer injury-causing crashes.
Background
Toronto was not a spur-of-the-moment pick. CBC reported Waymo’s Toronto ambitions in December 2025, and in April 2026 several Canadian outlets covered its application to Ontario’s automated-vehicle pilot. That same month, Mayor Olivia Chow’s office told the Toronto Star it would not support the service if it cost local jobs, and that the company “must demonstrate this will not happen.” The “hundreds of roles” line in this week’s announcement lands right there — Electrek reads it as a direct answer to the mayor’s condition.
The Element relationship is not new either. Per Element’s press release, the two companies announced a multi-year partnership in June, with Element supporting Waymo’s autonomous operations starting in San Diego; Toronto is the next phase of that agreement.
Toronto is also not Ontario’s first driverless vehicle. CP24, citing The Canadian Press, notes that Gatik began a rollout of 50 autonomous box trucks for Loblaw in the city last year. The difference is freight versus people: Gatik moves groceries, Waymo wants to move passengers, and carrying paying passengers needs a different permit. On the wider regulatory story, we covered the opposite approach in Tesla’s European rename of Full Self-Driving: Europe traded a name for approval, while in Ontario the rules themselves have not been written yet.
The facts
Waymo’s blog spells out the technical path: manual driving in Toronto while building high-definition maps of the local street network, then validation runs with trained autonomous specialists behind the wheel to confirm the Waymo Driver adapts to local conditions. The Canada page adds details the blog leaves out: the fleet starts with “a limited number” of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles; testing spans neighbourhoods including St. Lawrence Market, Harbourfront, Roncesvalles Village, Parkdale, Liberty Village, Don Mills, Yorkdale, Leaside, East York, Summerhill, Yonge & Eglinton, Weston, Mimico and Etobicoke; and testing hours typically run 24/7.
| Item | Figure | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Target for first riders | 2028 | Waymo blog, 2026-10-16 |
| Manual driving starts | “in the coming days” | Same |
| Vehicle | A limited number of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE | Waymo Canada page, 2026-10-16 |
| Fully autonomous distance | 400M+ km (blog) / 450M+ km (Canada page) | Waymo, 2026-10-16 |
| Serious-injury crashes | 95% fewer than humans | Waymo blog |
| Injury-causing crashes | 82% fewer than a human driving the same distance | Waymo Canada page |
| Pedestrian / cyclist crashes | 93% / 86% fewer | CityNews, 2026-10-16 |
| Fleet size | Roughly 4,000 vehicles | CityNews, 2026-10-16 |
| Paid trips per week | 500,000+ | Waymo Canada page / CityNews |
| Cities served | 15+ major US cities | Waymo Canada page |
| Element’s fleet under management | 1.5M+ vehicles globally | Element press release, 2026-10-16 |
| Ontario pilot expiry | 2027-10-13 | ontario.ca AVPP page |
Read the numbers with their baselines. The blog’s 95% is about crashes “involving serious injury or worse,” measured against humans driving in the cities where Waymo operates. The Canada page’s 82% is about “injury causing crashes,” alongside a 450 million kilometre figure. Both come from Waymo, published the same day, and they do not line up exactly. CityNews relays separate company data: 93% fewer pedestrian-involved crashes and 86% fewer cyclist-involved crashes, plus a study with reinsurer Swiss Re finding 76% fewer property damage claims and no bodily injury claims per million rider-only miles.
Element’s release sets out the division of labour: Element Mobility coordinates the people, facilities, infrastructure and vehicle operations, covering fleet lifecycle management, vehicle readiness and maintenance, charging infrastructure, energy management and connected intelligence. Element manages more than 1.5 million vehicles worldwide and says it identified over $1.7 billion in cost-savings opportunities for client fleets in the past year.
Ontario’s clock
The part of this story that is easiest to skip is whether the 2028 date can hold. Ontario’s own government page for the Automated Vehicle Pilot Program states that the province began piloting automated vehicles in 2016, updated the program in 2019 to allow driverless testing under certain conditions, and that “the pilot program has been extended until October 13, 2027.” Electrek, citing Ontario’s e-Laws database, reports that the underlying regulation, O. Reg. 306/15, is revoked on that same date and that the province has not said what replaces it. I could not open the regulation itself — Ontario’s e-Laws pages require JavaScript and CanLII returned HTTP 403 — so the revocation claim stays attributed to Electrek’s reading of e-Laws, while the October 13, 2027 expiry is verifiable on the province’s own pilot page.
The nature of the framework matters more than the date. The AVPP is a testing framework, not a ride-hailing licence. Electrek cites Canadian Affairs reporting that Transport Canada told it self-driving vehicles on public roads are limited to “temporary pilot projects” run by the provinces. Waymo’s 2028 date therefore depends on Doug Ford’s government writing commercial passenger rules that do not exist today.
Laid out on a timeline, Waymo has to outrun the province’s legislative calendar, not its own engineering. California just went the other way: the governor signed the No Robo Bosses Act, writing human final say into employment decisions effective July 1, 2027. Both places have rules arriving after the technology; the difference is that California at least put its effective date on paper.
What others say
Waymo’s official line is milestone plus safety record. Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana calls entering Canada “an important milestone in Waymo’s global journey” and describes Toronto as innovative, diverse and forward-looking. Nicole Gavel, who heads business development, says the company and its partners will invest in hundreds of roles over time across fleet maintenance, validation driving, customer service and other operations functions.
The partner’s framing is a capability pitch. Element CEO Laura Dottori-Attanasio says the deal shows Element evolving to support “the next generation of mobility.” Accessibility groups are part of the narrative too: Michelle McQuigge, CEO of BALANCE for Blind Adults, says Waymo’s early engagement with the sight-loss community “reflects the kind of approach that leads to real results.” Waymo also lists CNIB, Community Living Toronto, Connected Canadians and Epilepsy Ontario.
The independent angles split on two points. Electrek’s read: entering a new country with two-plus years and at least two Toronto winters of data is the right way to do it, but 2028 is Ontario’s deadline as much as Waymo’s — if the province lets the pilot lapse without a commercial framework, Canada’s biggest city watches London and Tokyo get robotaxis first. CityNews adds the industry-side estimate: research from the Chamber of Progress puts automated ride-hailing’s potential contribution to Canada’s GDP at nearly $1.34 billion by 2050, supporting almost 14,000 jobs. That is an advocacy group’s projection, not a government forecast.
Our take
For anyone building autonomous vehicles, robotics or mobility products, there are three usable layers here. The first is the playbook: map manually, validate with a specialist aboard, then take riders — the same cadence Waymo has run in US cities, now transplanted to another country. The second is the localisation checklist: Element’s scope breaks “fleet operations” into charging, maintenance, cleaning, readiness, energy management and connected intelligence, which is what any team landing a driverless fleet abroad has to staff. The third is the risk flag: the date is not a commitment, and the precondition is a provincial government writing commercial rules before the pilot lapses in October 2027.
The honest catch is weather. Waymo’s own site calls its system the “all-weather Driver,” and Toronto winters bring slush, road salt and freezing rain that coat sensors for months. Electrek notes Denver was Waymo’s first real snow city; Toronto will put the all-weather claim to the test, which is precisely why the official plan stretches the manual and validation phases out.
What is still unknown: how many vehicles Toronto ultimately gets, what a ride will cost, whether safety data will be disclosed separately from the US figures, and whether Ontario actually writes a commercial passenger framework. To follow along, the Waymo Toronto page has an email signup promising notice when commercial service becomes available — for now the only way to hold a place in line.