Waymo's autonomous vehicles are off New York City streets. The company's permits from the NYC Department of Transportation and New York State DMV expired March 31. That ends a testing program that put eight Jaguar I-PACE vehicles on Brooklyn and Manhattan roads starting in August 2025.

All eight cars operated with trained safety drivers behind the wheel. Waymo reported zero collisions during the entire testing period, according to NYC DOT.

The expiration doesn't mean Waymo is walking away. A company spokesperson said Waymo is "hopeful" the state DMV permit gets renewed as part of ongoing budget negotiations in Albany. If that happens, the company would evaluate resuming testing.

Cars can still be manually driven in the city. That means human drivers behind the wheel, mapping street layouts and recording traffic patterns to feed information back to Waymo's systems. But no autonomous testing is happening.

The political headwinds are real. Governor Kathy Hochul already pulled back from earlier proposals to allow autonomous vehicles outside NYC in February. Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration is signaling caution too. DOT spokesperson Vin Barone told THE CITY that any AV policy decisions will "center workers and their well-being."

NYC is a punishing environment for self-driving tech. Skyscrapers block GPS signals, forcing Waymo's system to rely more on LiDAR and visual odometry for positioning. The traffic is chaotic: double-parked cars, jaywalking pedestrians, weaving e-bikes. These edge cases far exceed what Waymo encounters in Phoenix or Los Angeles.

The testing also spanned winter months. Sensors dealt with road salt, slush, and potholes that obscure lane markings on narrow, aging streets.

Waymo operates fully autonomous agents in 10 other U.S. cities and has plans for 18 more, plus London and Tokyo. It has spent over $3 million lobbying New York officials. A 2021 bill to remove the human driver requirement hasn't advanced.

The company declined to share any findings from its NYC testing with THE CITY. Sam Schwartz, who directs the transportation research program at Hunter College, called for independent safety studies, noting that AV companies have been "opaque with their data." Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, representing drivers licensed by the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, put it bluntly: "Neither the city nor the state are ready."