Waymo begins testing the waters for a robotaxi service in Los Angeles
Waymo begins testing the waters for a robotaxi service in Los Angeles
LA would be Waymo’s largest market to date.
Meanwhile Cruise is causing traffic jams in Austin.
Haven’t they been running in LA for many months now?
The article says that they've been preparing for awhile, but they are now looking to start commercial service.
Waymo has had a small fleet of vehicles mapping the streets of LA since at least 2019, but it only began to make preparations for a commercial service in recent months. Aside from mapping, Waymo has been following its traditional playbook of deploying its vehicles in autonomous mode with a human safety driver behind the wheel before transitioning into a commercially available service.
Must have been test drives then, seen them driving around a bunch for a while now. LA is gonna be a real test of its capabilities for sure!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Waymo announced a “tour across Los Angeles” that allows curious residents the opportunity to ride in fully autonomous vehicles as the Alphabet-owned company begins to lay the groundwork for the launch of a commercial robotaxi service.
Robotaxi companies in San Francisco have been facing pushback from city officials who oppose their expansion, citing blocked intersections and obstructed emergency vehicles.
Waymo has had a small fleet of vehicles mapping the streets of LA since at least 2019, but it only began to make preparations for a commercial service in recent months.
Aside from mapping, Waymo has been following its traditional playbook of deploying its vehicles in autonomous mode with a human safety driver behind the wheel before transitioning into a commercially available service.
For Waymo, LA represents its biggest and possibly most challenging market to date: a metropolitan area of 13 million people with crisscrossing freeway ramps, narrow surface streets, many unprotected left turns, blinding sunsets down its east-west roads, and a plethora of distracted drivers.
Waymo is locked in a tight race with Cruise and other AV companies to get more robot cars on the street so it can start seeing a return on its enormous investment.
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