Downtown Denver is about to become a testing ground for the future of transportation.

Waymo, the autonomous ride-hailing service owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, confirmed this week that it is bringing its self-driving vehicles to the Mile High City.

The rollout begins with roughly a dozen electric cars, a mix of Jaguar I-PACE SUVs and Zeekr RTs, that will hit downtown streets in an “exploratory phase.” For now, each vehicle will still have a human driver behind the wheel. Over time, Waymo plans to transition to fully driverless service, once it completes mapping and testing Denver’s unique street network.

Governor Jared Polis and Mayor Mike Johnston both welcomed the move, framing it as a win for safety, sustainability, and innovation. “Waymo’s climate-friendly technology will make our streets safer and cleaner,” Johnston said, adding he’s eager to take his first ride.

So what makes Waymo’s tech different? Each car relies on a sensor-rich system that combines lidar, radar, cameras, and high-definition maps, all interpreted by AI to create a 360-degree view of the road.

This layered approach allows the vehicles to “see” and react in conditions where humans or camera-only systems might struggle. That stands in contrast to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, which relies mostly on cameras and neural networks. Tesla’s system is marketed as driver-assist, requiring constant human oversight, while Waymo is designed from the ground up to eventually operate with no driver at all.

Denver joins a short list of U.S. cities where Waymo is already active, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta.

The company claims its cars have been involved in far fewer serious crashes than human drivers, though critics point to high-profile glitches in other markets.

How do you feel about Waymo, would you use it? We’ve personally tried it multiple times in San Francisco. While it’s pricier than Uber or Lyft, it delivers a clean ride without the forced conversation.

Note: All images here are real Denver photos captured by us, with the Waymo vehicles digitally generated through AI to show what Denver streets will soon look like.