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There's an aspect to Waymo's plan that means that they never really have to solve highway driving to capture market share. Highways are appealing to car manufacturers because they incentivize speed, acceleration, braking, and more nefariously, to be the bigger vehicle and more capable of surviving accidents. When automobiles were a new, growing market, manufacturers lobbied for fast streets, wide highways, and ample parking.

A viable self-driving business plan, on the other hand, has to accommodate taking final responsibility in an accident. That was what got manufacturers into the lobbying game to begin with - they needed to create a public that saw themselves as responsible owners while everyone else on the road was a meanace, and worked towards that reality through both consumer marketing and the financing and regulation systems around autos. Self-drive means that the goal changes to "every ride we provide is a safe one, and we do not serve customers that ask for danger".

And that means that some markets like regional airports and particularly sprawling, car-dependent metros may go unserved for some time, depending on how the strategists feel about their chances, but then the aspect of courting the public shifts towards strongarming governments into more intensive road safety measures, and then to only professional human drivers, and then perhaps to mandated self-drive in urban areas. Having tons of capital to throw around lets you dream very big.

In this way the problem gets redefined incrementally towards something that meets with where the engineering actually is and allows Waymo to compete while retaining its excellent record.