The astonishment was immediate. The members of the Cuban podcast Fuera De Serie got into a Waymo in Miami and recorded their reaction in real-time to a vehicle that started, drove, and took them to their destination without any human touching the steering wheel. The video published on TikTok on July 13 accumulated over 50,000 views in just a few days.
What surprised the group—identified in the tags as Wendy, @ClaudiaG96, and @elmiki93—was the complete absence of any human action before departure. "You didn't check the mirrors or anything; you just took off like a madman," commented one of the members as the car started the journey on its own.
From inside, the passengers discovered that the vehicle offers more control than they expected. "In the app, you can connect it to Spotify and play whatever music you want, you can turn the volume up or down, control the air, increase or decrease the temperature," one of them explained during the ride.
The internal display constantly showed the speed, the route map, and the remaining battery level. At that moment, the gauge indicated 53,000 miles of range. The car was driving in an area with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour and did not exceed it at any time, which also caught the group's attention: "This is a thirty-five zone, and nothing happens, kid, what are you going to do?"
Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company of Alphabet —the parent company of Google—, launched its service in Miami on January 22, 2026 for an initial group of users and made it available to the general public without a waiting list on April 15 of the same year.
Miami has thus become the sixth city in the United States where the robotaxi operates commercially, following Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin. The coverage area spans approximately 100 square miles of Miami-Dade County, including Brickell, Wynwood, Little Havana, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach, and Bal Harbour.
The service operates similarly to Uber or Lyft: the user requests a ride through the Waymo One app, receives an estimated fare before confirming, unlocks the vehicle with their phone upon arrival, and pays digitally at the end. Tipping is not allowed since there is no human driver.
Prices tend to be higher than those of the competition —reports from 2026 indicate differences of around 10 dollars on certain routes— although in June 2026, the company launched a Premier subscription plan for 29.99 dollars a month for frequent users.
The coverage area includes Little Havana and other neighborhoods with a high Cuban presence, making the service a particularly attractive innovation for the island community based in South Florida. The podcast video captures that genuine reaction: a blend of amazement, humor, and Cuban slang in response to a technology that, although available in Miami since January, remains a new experience for many residents, especially those who have arrived recently.
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