Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving division has revealed how often its robotaxi service is being utilised in various cities of the United States.

In an interview with CNBC, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the firm has reached 10 million trips, doubling in the past five months alone.

“These are all paid trips, and they represent people who are really integrating Waymo Driver into their everyday lives,” said Mawakana, speaking at the Google I/O developer conference.

Sustainable focus

The 10 million figure includes rides in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Phoenix area.

Waymo is currently delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides a week, Alphabet said in its April earnings report.

Meanwhile Waymo on Monday reported it had won approval to expand its autonomous ride-hailing service to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose.

Waymo’s Mawakana confirmed to CNBC that Waymo is not yet profitable but that the company is “super focused on building a sustainable business.”

“We’re proving out that it can be a profitable business,” she said. “There’s a path to profitability.”

Tesla ‘challenge’

Waymo’s figures show Elon Musk and Tesla the scale of the challenge they will face in the robotaxi sector in the years ahead.

Musk told CNBC on Tuesday that Tesla’s planned launch of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas next month is still on track, and that the company will start with about 10 vehicles and rapidly expand to thousands if the debut goes well with no incidents.

Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin launch.

It should be remembered that Elon Musk has made multiple claims over the years about the arrival of a robotaxi fleet.

Tesla recently failed in its attempt to trademark the term “Robotaxi” in reference to its two seater “Cybercab” vehicles – which will start out with a safety driver.

Meanwhile the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has asked Tesla for more details on its planned automated taxi service in Austin, focusing on how the service uses Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving”, or FSD, offering that is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the agency.

Experts have flagged that the Tesla primarily relies on a cheaper camera-based systems and computer vision, instead of using sophisticated sensors including lidar and radar in its vehicles, which is the approach Waymo has adopted.

Musk in 2019 stated that LIDAR is “expensive and unnecessary”.

Waymo’s Mawakana however reportedly said that the Alphabet owned unit has taken what it views as the “safest path.”

“There’s probably a lot of ways it can be done, but we’re the only ones that have done it,” she told CNBC. “We’ve been doing it 24 hours a day for almost five years. And so to us, it’s really important to focus on safety, not focus on safety and then cost — not cost and then safety.”