A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar taxi drives alongside a avenue on March 14, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Photographs
Waymo is now offering greater than 100,000 paid robotaxi rides per week within the US, in response to a LinkedIn announcement by its co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. That is double the 50,000 weekly paid journeys the corporate reported in Might.
A spokesperson for the Alphabet-owned driverless automobile enterprise informed CNBC on Tuesday that San Francisco now “serves probably the most journeys” among the many cities the place Waymo operates its industrial service: San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles.
Final month, Alphabet introduced that it was investing an extra $5 billion into Waymo, which began as a self-driving venture on the firm in 2009.
On Monday, Waymo revealed particulars about its new, “era 6” self-driving system, which ought to allow the corporate to supply driverless companies in a wider array of climate situations and with out requiring as many expensive cameras and sensors in its automobiles.
Waymo, which boasts round 700 automobiles in its fleet at the moment, operates the one industrial robotaxi service within the U.S., Waymo One.
Waymo beforehand partnered with the ridehailing big Uber in Phoenix to deliver its service to the app’s current customers there. In a press release on Tuesday, Waymo famous that in June 2024, it added 90 sq. miles to its service in Phoenix as nicely, making it the biggest autonomous ride-hailing “territory” within the states.
This month, Waymo additionally expanded its San Francisco robotaxi service into three new California areas — Daly Metropolis, Broadmoor and Colma — and is now testing its driverless automobiles on freeways across the San Francisco metro space.
Whereas CNBC couldn’t independently affirm the corporate’s security claims, Waymo additionally says that “over 14.8 million rider-only miles pushed, the Waymo Driver was 3.5x higher in avoiding crashes that prompted accidents and 3x higher in avoiding police-reported crashes than human drivers.”
Though industrial robotaxi companies from Didi and Pony.ai are up and operating in China, Waymo presently faces restricted home competitors. GM-owned Cruise skilled setbacks that took its driverless automobiles off the street quickly, and firms together with Uber and Ford have shuttered their efforts to develop robotaxis.
Elon Musk’s electrical automobile maker, Tesla, has been promising it could flip clients’ current automobiles into driverless vehicles with a software program replace for years. Nonetheless, the corporate has not but produced a automobile able to serving as a robotaxi. Tesla plans to unveil its CyberCab, or devoted robotaxi, at a hotly-anticipated occasion on October 10.
