In a milestone for the self-driving industry, Waymo said it will open up its autonomous ride-hailing service to the general public in metro Phoenix, Arizona. In the upcoming weeks, people in the Phoenix area can hail a taxi like they would a Lyft or an Uber ... then hop in a car that’ll know where they want to go to be taken to that destination. But... the car will be driving itself!
Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle division, has been testing its cars in the Phoenix area since 2016, diligently upgrading the technology and capacity to eventually roll out a fully fledged commercial service. Hundreds of testers have been experimenting with the Robot Taxi service through the Waymo One app.
The announcement expands the current program in two ways:
- Existing customers of Waymo One can start taking their friends and family along.
- By November, Waymo will make the app available to the “general public” in the Phoenix area.
To deal with the current pandemic, Waymo is limiting the scope of its service by restricting it to fully driverless rides. It is installing barriers in its vehicles so down the road it can plunk a human safety driver in the front seat and address a larger geographical market.
Other car companies -- namely Tesla and GM -- are racing to introduce driverless vehicles, but Waymo has recently pulled away from the pack. This spring, it raised $3 billion to accelerate the rollout of its commercial service, using money for the first time from a company not associated with Google.
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