Toronto drivers will start spotting an unfamiliar sight in the coming days: Waymo cars, driving the city the ordinary way, with a person at the wheel. That is how every Waymo city begins. On October 16 the company announced Toronto as its first operation in Canada, with a target of welcoming its first riders in 2028, and the work starts now – mapping first, opinions later.
The announcement came paired with news from Element Fleet Management, the Toronto-headquartered fleet company that will support the operation on the ground. Element already works with Waymo in San Diego under a partnership announced in June. Toronto extends that arrangement to end-to-end fleet support, the unglamorous side of robotaxis that decides whether a service actually runs on time: vehicles cleaned, charged, maintained and back on the road.
Mapping first, riders in 2028
Waymo’s plan follows the phased pattern it has used in city after city. Cars arrive and drive manually while the company builds a high-definition map of the street network. Trained autonomous specialists then test with the driving system engaged, giving the software time to learn local conditions before any member of the public gets in.
Toronto is a serious test of that patience. It is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan regions in North America, and it has winter – real winter, with snow, slush and the kind of grey February light that makes cameras work hard. Waymo points to its all-weather driving capability as a reason the city fits. A system that can handle a Toronto January has a claim on almost any city on the continent.
The company is also putting money and jobs behind the plan. The launch includes investment in local facilities, and the partners expect the operation to support hundreds of roles over time, spanning fleet maintenance, validation driving and customer service. A robotaxi service, it turns out, employs plenty of people. They just do different jobs than driving.
Canadian roots were already there
This is an expansion, but not a cold start. Waymo noted two Canadian ties that predate the announcement: the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is a long-term investor in the company, and Magna International, the Ontario-based auto supplier, is a manufacturing partner. Toronto is also home turf for Element, which gives the local operation a partner that knows Canadian fleets, Canadian winters and Canadian regulators.
Hearing the two chief executives side by side tells you how each side sees the deal. Element’s Laura Dottori-Attanasio framed it as a fleet company evolving with the next generation of mobility, bringing its operational experience to a new kind of client. Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana called the Canadian expansion a milestone in the company’s global journey and described Toronto as innovative and forward-looking, the sort of city that shares a commitment to safer streets and more accessible transport.
A network that keeps adding airports and countries
Put Toronto on the map next to this autumn’s other moves and a shape emerges. In the United States, Waymo has spent recent weeks opening services to everyone – most recently opening its robotaxis to everyone in three cities at once – and adding airport pickups, including robotaxi pickups at Nashville airport, its fifth airport. Airports and new countries are what a service adds when the home operation has settled into routine.
Toronto also changes the competitive picture. A Canadian launch means a second regulatory environment, a second set of winter data, and a flagship city in a country where no major US robotaxi operator has planted a flag yet. First movers in a new market get to set expectations – for riders, for city officials and for insurers – while everyone else plays catch-up.
What it means for travellers, cities and investors
For travellers, the honest timeline matters: mapping cars now, testing next, public riders in 2028 if validation and approvals stay on track. Anyone visiting Toronto before then will still hail a conventional cab. But the direction is set, and Toronto joins the short list of cities where a driverless ride is a scheduled future rather than a speculation.
For cities watching from the sidelines, the lesson is in the sequencing. Waymo is not asking Toronto to leap. It is asking to map, to test with specialists, to build facilities and hire locally, and only then to carry riders. That staged approach has become its calling card with regulators, and it is a template other cities can demand from any operator that comes knocking.
For investors, the Element deal is the detail to hold on to. Robotaxi economics live or die on fleet uptime and cost per mile, not on launch-day headlines. Handing fleet operations to a specialist with scale, in that specialist’s home city, is the kind of boring, sensible decision that separates an operating business from a demonstration. Toronto in 2028 is the headline. The fleet contract underneath it is the story.
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