Waymo CEO Says Society 'Will Accept' Robotaxi Deaths While Licensing Self-Driving Tech to Toyota

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana sat down with the New York Times this week for a remarkably candid interview that simultaneously tried to reassure the public about robotaxi safety while quietly revealing the company’s plans to put its autonomous driving technology in personally owned vehicles through a licensing deal with Toyota.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Robotaxi Safety

Mawakana didn’t shy away from the elephant in the room. When asked about accidents, she acknowledged what most tech CEOs would never say publicly: society “will accept a death caused by a robotaxi.” Her exact words: “We know it’s not perfection.”

This comes as Waymo faces intensifying scrutiny following recent incidents, including a collision involving a child in Santa Monica, California. The company now operates in ten metropolitan areas across six states, and the more it expands, the more these incidents will pile up. It’s simple math that nobody in Silicon Valley wants to talk about.

The Scale Play: 1 Million Rides Per Week

Waymo recently launched fully autonomous ride-hailing in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando — the first time it has simultaneously opened to the public in multiple cities. The company is on track to serve over one million paid weekly robotaxi rides in the US by the end of 2026, up from quadrupling its trip count in 2025.

Mawakana has laid groundwork for service in more than 20 cities. That’s an aggressive expansion for a company whose safety record, while statistically better than human drivers (five times safer overall, twelve times safer for pedestrians according to Waymo’s own data), still involves real accidents with real people.

The Toyota Deal Changes Everything

Perhaps the most significant revelation is Waymo’s plan to license its autonomous driving technology to Toyota. This marks Waymo’s first partnership in the personally owned vehicle segment — meaning the same self-driving tech currently navigating robotaxis could soon be in the car sitting in your driveway.

The Toyota partnership could dramatically change Waymo’s economics by lowering costs through shared platform development and unlocking a new licensing revenue stream beyond its own operated fleets. Analysts suggest this could be followed by alliances with European or Japanese automakers like Volkswagen or Nissan.

The Trust Problem

Mawakana knows she needs to earn the public’s trust. But here’s the paradox: Waymo is asking people to trust technology that its own CEO admits will kill someone, while simultaneously planning to put that technology in millions of consumer vehicles through licensing deals.

The company’s safety data looks good on paper — but data doesn’t comfort the parent of the child hit in Santa Monica. And as Waymo scales from thousands to millions of rides per week, the absolute number of incidents will grow, even if the per-mile rate stays low.

The Bottom Line

Waymo is making a calculated bet that the public will accept occasional autonomous vehicle deaths the same way we’ve accepted 40,000+ annual traffic fatalities from human drivers. They’re probably right — but the transition period, where every robotaxi accident makes national headlines while human-caused crashes barely register, is going to be ugly. And now they want to license that controversy directly into your Toyota.