Self-driving Waymo taxis appear ready to start in Charlotte
12 white Jaguar SUVs unloaded in uptown
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Delivery of 12 Jaguar SUVs uptown could be the start of autonomous car service
by Tony Mecia
It looks like Waymo’s self-driving taxis will soon be on Charlotte’s streets.
A dozen Waymo vehicles have arrived on a gravel lot uptown, raising the prospect that Charlotte is on the verge of having the self-driving cars start service here.
Jack Graham, 27, told The Ledger he was looking out his window on Monday and saw a “really nice trailer unloading a bunch of these Jaguars.” Waymo uses Jaguar SUVs as the primary vehicles in its fleet. The cars are white and say “Waymo” on the side, with QR codes accompanied by text that reads: “Download the app and ride today.”
Graham, a product manager at the franchising marketplace tech company Franzy, said eight vehicles were unloaded Monday and another four Tuesday morning.
Graham said he talked to a Waymo employee Monday, who told him that the Waymo vehicles need to drive every Charlotte street three times, with humans behind the wheel, before they are allowed to operate without a driver. The testing process should take about a year, Graham said he was told.
The Waymo vehicles are on land owned by the N.C. Department of Transportation. Asked about them on Tuesday, an NCDOT spokeswoman referred inquires to a Waymo spokesman.
In an email, the Waymo spokesman said he would be “happy to share more details” if The Ledger agreed to withhold from publishing the information until 9 a.m. Wednesday, a common public relations/media tactic known as an embargo. (That means you will probably see a deluge of coverage in other media at 9 a.m. Wednesday.)
Waymo, based in Silicon Valley, operates in 10 cities, including Atlanta and three in Texas, and has started testing in Nashville. The vehicles are a common sight on the streets in West Coast cities, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. [article updated 2/24/26 to incorporate responses from NCDOT and Waymo]
North Carolina passed legislation in 2017 allowing fully autonomous vehicles and preventing local governments from setting restrictions, according to the (Raleigh) News & Observer.
A Ledger reporter on Tuesday morning drove to the Metropolis Cedar Yards 3 gravel lot off of McNinch Street, where the Waymo vehicles were parked in the back.
Upon driving up, a security guard who was parked next to the line of vehicles approached The Ledger reporter’s vehicle. After identifying as a member of the media and asking to photograph the Waymo vehicles, the security guard told The Ledger that permission from Waymo was required first.
The Ledger suggested taking a photo and then reaching out to Waymo for permission afterward, but the guard would not budge. —Ashley Fahey contributed to this article.
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