Waymo, the Alphabet Inc subsidiary dedicated to developing autonomous vehicles, has declared that its cars are ready to move about independently of safety drivers in San Francisco, six months after starting trial runs in the Californian city.
The update came in a blog post by its CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, who also highlighted the progress and lessons learned by the company through its experience in the city. Since August, Waymo has been providing hundredds of free rides to selected consenting residents of San Francisco under a program it calls 'Trusted Testers'. Safety drivers have remained on board up till this point in the modified Jaguar I-PACEs.
Waymo has been running its 'Trusted Tester' program in San Francisco since August 2021 Waymo has been competing against a number of huge carmakers - most notably thus far, Tesla - in the race to bring autonomous driving technology to the masses.
It does, however, remain the only company at the moment to have fully driverless vehicles operating at between Level 3 and 4 autonomy; it currently runs its robo-taxi ride-hailing service Waymo One in fellow American city, Phoenix. In the meantime, it has also been mapping New York City, and announced a collaboration last year with Geely's premium electric brand, Zeekr, to produce cars specially for the company.
Successfully conquering San Francisco - especially on the regulatory front - would likely represent a huge win for Waymo, considering the Californian city's unwieldy geography and (in)famous steep and sloped streets.
If successful, San Francisco will be the second city to get Waymo One's fully autonomous robo-taxis Nonetheless, the timeline as to when fully driverless services in the city will be rolled out remains unclear, as the company still needs to obtain a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in order to collect fares for driverless passenger rides.
That reality does appear to be set more in the distant than near future, though; just last month, it obtained a permit from the Commission, alongside its General Motors-backed competitor Cruise, for charging riders for trips with a safety driver present.
The update came in a blog post by its CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, who also highlighted the progress and lessons learned by the company through its experience in the city. Since August, Waymo has been providing hundredds of free rides to selected consenting residents of San Francisco under a program it calls 'Trusted Testers'. Safety drivers have remained on board up till this point in the modified Jaguar I-PACEs.
It does, however, remain the only company at the moment to have fully driverless vehicles operating at between Level 3 and 4 autonomy; it currently runs its robo-taxi ride-hailing service Waymo One in fellow American city, Phoenix. In the meantime, it has also been mapping New York City, and announced a collaboration last year with Geely's premium electric brand, Zeekr, to produce cars specially for the company.
Successfully conquering San Francisco - especially on the regulatory front - would likely represent a huge win for Waymo, considering the Californian city's unwieldy geography and (in)famous steep and sloped streets.
That reality does appear to be set more in the distant than near future, though; just last month, it obtained a permit from the Commission, alongside its General Motors-backed competitor Cruise, for charging riders for trips with a safety driver present.
