Waymo set 2028 as its target to carry the first riders in Toronto, starting with manual driving

Waymo, the self-driving ride-hailing company, announced on its official blog that it is coming to Toronto. Its first Canadian riders are planned for 2028.

The first step is not driverless. In the coming days, Waymo cars will appear on Toronto streets with people driving them by hand.

What happens first

The cars will build high-definition maps of the city's streets. Think of it as a very detailed digital street atlas for the car's software.

After that comes testing with trained autonomous specialists sitting behind the wheel. Waymo says this phase should show whether its software, the Waymo Driver, copes with Toronto's own driving conditions.

Who is involved

Element Fleet Management, a company headquartered in Toronto, will run the fleet services. Waymo says it will invest, with Element and other partners, in hundreds of jobs over time. They include fleet maintenance, validation driving and customer service.

Waymo already has Canadian ties: the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is a long-term investor, and Magna International is its manufacturing partner.

Waymo also names accessibility groups it is working with, including CNIB, Epilepsy Ontario and BALANCE for Blind Adults. The last one's CEO, Michelle McQuigge, called the early engagement encouraging.

The safety claim

Waymo says data from more than 400 million fully autonomous kilometres shows 95% fewer crashes with serious injury or worse, which it describes as 20 times fewer, compared with human drivers in the cities where it operates.

That figure is Waymo's own, and it comes from other cities, not Toronto.

The limits are clear. Riders are about two years away, and no Toronto driverless testing has started. The source gives no launch area, fleet size or prices, and it does not say how the software will handle Toronto's weather.