One more step into the future: Waymo is preparing to offer its robotic taxi service, autonomous driverless cars, more widely in Phoenix (Arizona), where the company has already been testing its industry-leading vehicles since 2017.
The number of races offered without a person at the front will be initially limited, but
"in the near future, 100% of our races will be completely driverless,"
announced John Krafcik, the boss of the Alphabet subsidiary (parent company of Google), in a press release Thursday, October 8.
Read also: Autonomous vehicle: Waymo opens its doors to investors
An increasing number of passengers will be able to order a car on the Waymo app, see it arrive without a driver, and thus travel in an area of twelve hectares in Phoenix.
“We expect this service to be very popular, and we are grateful to our users for their patience as we increase the availability of our vehicles,”
said John Krafcik.
Until now, this possibility was reserved for a limited number of people, who had signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
And yet, only 5 to 10% of the races were offered to them completely independently.
From Thursday, users of Waymo One, its shopping program with an operator behind the wheel, now have access to driverless taxis.
Waymo currently has a few thousand monthly passengers, under NDA or Waymo One.
But within a few weeks, the general public will also be able to download the application and travel in cars that drive themselves.
Read also: Renault and Nissan join forces with Google in autonomous vehicles
The dream - or nightmare - thus takes shape little by little, starting with suitable places, with smooth and straight roads, a lot of visibility, a low risk of bad weather and favorable authorities.
Waymo has gained a leg up on other companies in the race, such as Tesla and Uber.
An Uber self-driving car was involved in a fatal crash in March 2018, forcing most groups involved in the technology to reassess their safety systems.
This summer Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, for his part declared
“extremely confident that we will very quickly have the basic functionalities of level 5 autonomous driving, which is basically full autonomy
(.. .)
this year ”
.
But he had already promised the autonomous car for 2018, then assured that he would circulate robot taxis in early 2020.
To read also: Jean-François Bonnefon: "The autonomous car poses dizzying ethical questions"
Born in a Google laboratory, Waymo became in 2016 a fully-fledged subsidiary.
In March, it raised $ 2.25 billion for its first external funding round from several investors and its parent company.
