Waymo Toronto 2028: Driverless Robotaxis Are Coming to Canada's Largest City

Keep your eyes on the Gardiner over the next few days. The Jaguar I-PACE crawling along in traffic with a spinning sensor rig on its roof isn't a film shoot — it's the first sign that Toronto is about to become a robotaxi town.

On Friday morning, Waymo — the self-driving arm of Google's parent company Alphabet — confirmed months of whispers: Toronto will be its first Canadian market, with the first paying riders climbing into driverless cars in 2028. Canada's largest city becomes the company's fourth market outside the United States, after London, Tokyo and Singapore.

"In the coming days, you'll start to see Waymo vehicles on the streets of Toronto as we begin driving," the company said. But don't expect to hail one just yet. Trained specialists will sit behind the wheel for now, while the cars build high-definition maps and the software gets validated against local reality — snow, streetcars stopping dead in mixed traffic, cyclists threading past moving cars.

Waymo Toronto launch: what was actually announced

The rollout follows Waymo's standard playbook — phased, safety-first, deliberately slow. Manual mapping and testing with specialists comes first. Driverless operation comes later, and paying riders later still, with 2028 as the target. Everything stays conditional on testing results, safety validation, and whatever regulatory framework Ontario eventually puts in place.

Running the ground game is a Canadian company. Toronto-headquartered Element Fleet Management will handle end-to-end fleet operations — maintenance, charging, customer service — through its Element Mobility division, building on an arrangement the two already run in San Diego. Waymo says the partnership will create hundreds of roles over time across fleet maintenance, validation driving, customer service and operations.

"Expanding into Canada marks an important milestone in Waymo's global journey," said co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. "Toronto is one of the world's great cities — innovative, diverse, and forward-looking. We're proud to bring the Waymo Driver to Canada's largest city and to partner with the vibrant business, arts and cultural communities that share our commitment to safer streets and more accessible mobility."

The jobs line is doing real work in that announcement. Back in April, Mayor Olivia Chow's office told the Toronto Star the city wouldn't support Waymo if the service came at the expense of local jobs — and that the company "must demonstrate this will not happen."

Why Toronto, and why the timing makes sense

This didn't come out of nowhere. Waymo lobbyists were pitching City Hall on the technology as far back as 2025, and the company's Canadian ties run deeper than the announcement suggests. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is a long-term Waymo investor, and Magna International — the Aurora-based auto giant — is the manufacturing partner that bolts Waymo's autonomous hardware onto vehicles like the Jaguar I-PACE, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Zeekr.

Gatik's driverless delivery trucks already run for Loblaw in the city — but Waymo is the first aiming to put ordinary passengers in the back seat with nobody up front.

Waymo now completes more than 500,000 paid rides a week across more than a dozen US metros, and says its vehicles have logged over 400 million fully autonomous kilometres with 95 per cent fewer crashes causing serious injury or death than human drivers. That's the company's own data — but it's the number regulators will be staring at.

The catch: Ontario has no rules for robotaxis yet

Ontario has approved Waymo's participation in its Automated Vehicle Pilot Program, which covers testing. But the province has no regulatory framework for a commercial driverless ride-hailing service — no licensing path, no operating rules, nothing that turns a test permit into a business. Waymo's 2028 target assumes that gap gets filled. It hasn't been yet.

Then there's the Toronto-specific exam the technology has to pass: a February snowstorm on the 401, a streetcar discharging passengers into live traffic on King Street, a food courier on an e-bike doing something no traffic model predicted. Waymo says the whole point of the mapping phase is to let the Waymo Driver adapt to Toronto's "distinct driving conditions." The city is, in effect, the test.

What Waymo in Toronto means for your next ride

If the timeline holds, sometime in 2028 Torontonians get a new option alongside Uber, Lyft and the TTC: a car with no driver, summoned from an app. Advocates for the sight-loss community see genuine promise — independent mobility without depending on anyone's schedule. Taxi and ride-hail drivers see something else entirely, and the fight over what this does to driving jobs is only getting started.

For now, the deal is simpler. A strange Jaguar with a sensor hat, a human being very much in the driver's seat, learning every pothole and streetcar track in the city — so that one day, there doesn't have to be.

CityNews Toronto on the Waymo announcement — including what Torontonians think about hailing a driverless taxi (Oct. 16, 2026).

CP24's The Morning Rush on the robotaxi pilot program coming to Toronto — and why the city should be "really careful" (Oct. 16, 2026).

Sources

• CNA / Reuters — "Alphabet's Waymo plans first Canada robotaxi service in Toronto in 2028" (Oct 16, 2026) — channelnewsasia.com
• MobileSyrup — "Self-driving Waymo taxis will hit Toronto streets sooner than you think" (Oct 16, 2026) — mobilesyrup.com
• Electrek — "Waymo picks Toronto as first Canadian city, targets riders in 2028" (Oct 16, 2026) — electrek.co
• ToDoCanada — "Waymo Plans to Launch Self-Driving Ride-Hailing Service in Toronto, Its First Canadian Market" (Oct 16, 2026) — todocanada.ca
• The Northern Current — "Waymo Targets Toronto Robotaxi Service in 2028" (Oct 16, 2026; cites The Canadian Press via CHCH, 9:13 a.m. Toronto time) — thenortherncurrent.com
• CTV News — "Waymo to test robotaxis in Toronto in 2028" (Toronto at Noon broadcast, Oct 16, 2026) — youtube.com/@CTVNews