Waymo expands self-driving taxi service around San Francisco and Los Angeles
Waymo is expanding its autonomous taxi service to the San Francisco peninsula, and more parts of Los Angeles, the company said Tuesday. It is adding 10 square miles around San Francisco and 16 square miles around L.A.
Starting Tuesday, riders in Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma will be able to request rides through Waymo. Starting Wednesday, riders in Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, Playa Vista and other parts of Hollywood, Chinatown and Westwood will be able to use the service.
Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been operating in San Francisco since 2009 and has fully autonomous rides in the area by the end of 2022In June, San Francisco’s waiting list was lifted, allowing anyone to go through the Waymo One app 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The service is also available to all public riders in metro Phoenix and to select members of the public in Los Angeles. Waymo currently operates testing in Austinand plans to open it to riders later this year.
Also see: Waymo opens self-driving rides to everyone in San Francisco, no waitlist needed
The company says it runs more than 50,000 paid rides each week in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, using the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. The cost of a ride (and wait time) varies based on time of day and location, but in my experience, prices are comparable to Uber or Lyft. Waymo is also testing autonomous rides on area freeways. An exclusive video shared with CNET in May shows the company’s vehicles navigating on- and off-ramps and changing lanes without a driver behind the wheel.
Look at this: Testing Waymo’s Safe Exit Feature in a Self-Driving Taxi
Waymo’s expansion hasn’t been without its share of hiccups. The company ran into trouble after its vehicles were involved in a series of high-profile crashes earlier this year, including one with a motorcyclist in San Francisco, and another involving a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (The recalled and its software updated (to address the problem.) The company has maintained that the autonomous Waymo Driver “performed up to 3.5 times better at preventing crashes resulting in injuries and 2 times better at preventing police-reported crashes than human drivers in SF and Phoenix.”
Competitor Cruise was suspended indefinitely in California last year after one of its self-driving cars struck a pedestrian who was not looking. In June, the GM-owned company resumed user manual and guided rides in Dallas and Houston, as part of an effort to “validate our self-driving technology against our rigorous safety and performance standards,” the company said in a statement post on XIt added that it plans to start with human-driven vehicles, before moving to “supervised autonomous driving with a safety driver behind the wheel.”
