So why do you think they’re only those cities? Because I’m hearing nothing from you that goes beyond ‘nuh uh’ so far.

Because as an old man who has actually lived in all these places - and also has ridden in Waymos before and has had friends on the Waymo team in the past, your comments seem pretty ridiculous.

Unlike Phoenix the choice of SF and LA seems to me like a PR choice. SF is where lots of tech nerds live and work, LA is one half of the country's media. I'd imagine that today if you're at all interested in this stuff and live in LA or SF you have ridden Waymo whereas when it was in a Phoenix suburb that's a very niche thing to go do unless you happened to live there.

A lot of the large population centres in the US are in these what you're calling "super cushy" zones where there's not much snow let alone ice. More launches in cities in Florida, Texas, California will address millions more people but won't mean more ice AFAIK. So I guess for you the most interesting announcement is probably New York, since New York certainly does have real snow. 2026 isn't that long, although I can imagine that maybe a President who thinks he's entitled to choose the Mayor of New York could mess that up.

As to the "But people in some places are crazy drivers" I saw that objection from San Francisco before it was announced. "Oh they'll never try here, nobody here drives properly. Can you imagine a Waymo trying to move anywhere in the Mission?". So I don't have much time for that.