Waymo pushes forward despite robotaxi setbacks

Autonomous ride-hailing company Waymo is expanding its operations despite recent setbacks in the robotaxi sector.

The Alphabet-owned company recently shared two milestones: that it received the OK from California regulators to expand its commercial service to Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula, and the commencement of fully autonomous testing in Austin, bringing driverless rides to its fourth US city.

Earlier this month, Waymo started driverless rides across 43 square miles of the Texas capital that’ll initially be open only to Waymo employees. They’ll open up to the public “later this year,” per the company.

“Our maturing operations in Austin builds on over 15 years’ experience we’ve carefully built driving autonomously across the US,” Saswat Panigrahi, Waymo’s chief product officer, said in a statement. “Our disciplined deployment in Texas’ capital brings us one step closer to safely delivering the benefits of fully autonomous driving to many more people.”

That news followed the nod earlier this month from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand the commercial ride-hailing services Waymo currently operates in San Francisco to a larger portion of the Bay Area and to LA, clearing the way for Waymo to charge riders there. Waymo announced this week at SXSW that starting Thursday, it’ll open up its riding-hailing service to “select members of the public” in LA, with plans to start charging for rides “in the coming weeks” and to scale up the service from there.

The California expansion was briefly paused by state regulators, The Verge reported, amid “protests from several San Francisco city agencies and other groups” over safety concerns. Moves to broaden robotaxi services have prompted pushback in communities where startups are testing and commercializing autonomous-vehicle tech. One example: a Waymo robotaxi in San Francisco was set on fire in February.

The entire robotaxi sector is facing regulatory scrutiny after some high-profile safety issues. Most notably, Waymo competitor Cruise took its entire fleet off the streets after an incident in October in which one of its cars injured a pedestrian. Waymo also recently reported a pair of crashes in Phoenix, and a Waymo vehicle collided with a cyclist in San Francisco last month.

Despite incremental progress, particularly in non-robotaxi applications, experts have told Tech Brew that self-driving cars are years away from becoming a mainstream reality.

Still, proponents of the tech argue that it eventually will lead to safer roads. Waymo has pointed to data that suggests its technology results in fewer crashes, based on millions of miles of fully autonomous driving it’s benchmarked against human drivers.

Update 03/13/24: This story has been updated with new information Waymo released about the timing of its plans in Los Angeles and Austin.