Waymo is launching its driverless taxi service in parts of California on Thursday after trialing the transpiration method for five months in the state,
The roll out will cover a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to Downtown Los Angeles, providing free rides to who have been onboarded to the company’s system.
Waymo, which is owned by Googles parent comp did not specify the cost of trips, previous riders of the driverless vehicles said they paid $7 for a 1.9-mile journey – and there was no need to tip.
However, the launch comes after a spate of high-profile crashes that saw two Waymo vehicles collide into a town truck at the same time, a vehicle hit a bicyclist and another last July when a driverless taxi caused a three car pile-up.
Waymo is rolling out its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles starting tomorrow
Waymo uses laser sensors, a radar, 360-degree camera, and an onboard computer to assess its surroundings
There are currently more than 50,000 Angelenos on Waymo’s waitlist, and the company said it will gradually onboard those residents before permanently welcoming all riders.
‘Once an unimaginable future, autonomous driving is now a real-world way of getting around for tens of thousands of people each week,’ said Waymo co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana.
‘After achieving key milestones in each city, we’re so excited to bring the safety, comfort and delight of our Waymo One service to more people in Los Angeles and Austin this year.’
Waymo invited LA residents to experience fully autonomous rides in October of last year, and said that since then, locals have taken more than 15,000 trips in the past five months in Santa Monica, Century City, West Hollywood, Mid City, Korea Town, and Downtown LA.
Waymo is holding off on making its autonomous rideshare service available to residents in Austin, Texas until later this year
Waymo uses light detection to create a 3D picture of its surroundings, a 360-degree camera, a radar, and an onboard computer to detect objects from hundreds of meters away and navigate through city streets.
Although the company is rolling out its taxi service in LA, it is still conducting fully autonomous testing in Austin, Texas.
The tests are only open to Waymo employees and encompass 43 square miles of Austin, including downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park, and others.
The company said it expects to open its Waymo One option to public riders later this year and said its autonomous vehicles ‘have now driven more than 10 million miles without a human driver behind the wheel.’
It added that there is ‘an unprecedented dataset of safe driving experience that has helped generalize the Waymo Driver’s capabilities to Los Angeles and Austin.’
The driverless taxi has been in a number of recent collisions including causing a three-car pile-up, fatally hitting a dog, and colliding with a cyclist
However, Waymo’s announcement comes after a recent spate of accidents that forced the company to scale back its release.
In December, two of the driverless vehicles also crashed into the same semi-truck in Arizona after misjudging the vehicle’s location.
The collision caused Waymo to issue several recalls and updates to its software two months later.
‘This voluntary recall reflects how seriously we take our responsibility to safely deploy our technology and to transparently communicate with the public,’ Waymo said at the time.
‘There are hundreds of recall reports submitted annually to NHTSA and we respect the importance of this road safety framework and our relevant legal obligations.’
Then in February, one vehicle collided with a cyclist in San Francisco after they turned left behind a large truck that was crossing the intersection.
The company said the truck had hidden the person from view and claimed the Waymo vehicle braked heavily but wasn’t able to avoid colliding with the cyclist.
Other collisions included an incident in June of last year when a Waymo vehicle struck and killed a dog in San Francisco and just one month later, a vehicle caused a three-car pileup in Tempe, Arizona after it braked to avoid a downed branch.
