Waymo Claims Thousands Of People Are Still Waiting For Their Autonomous Taxi Service

Autonomous Taxi from Waymo in trial phase in San Francisco. (photo: waymo)

JAKARTA – Waymo has given hundreds of people a robotaxi ride since its trial in San Francisco last August. While tens of thousands of residents are still on the waiting list, Alphabet Inc's co-chief executive said Friday, December 3 during a conference session on Reuters Next.

Waymo is one of the few companies worldwide to have billions of dollars in financing to develop self-driving cars and trucks.

But progress towards broad-based services has been slow. San Francisco, a city of nearly 900.000 people, is just the second trial ground for passenger service Waymo, which was founded in 2009.

"We're building a business. So we're really focused on how to commercialize this technology," said Co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, adding that they were looking at ways to tap the market for online transportation services, trucks, local delivery, and finally for ownership. private car.

Waymo in August began providing autonomous rides, which are free, to a number of people in San Francisco with safety drivers using its Jaguar electric vehicles.

Waymo deliberately chose a diverse range of testers, says Mawakana, to ensure the feedback is representative of the wider population. For example, half of San Francisco's motorists are women.

"In San Francisco, we are very focused on ensuring that there is gender diversity because safety and transportation are issues like that. Not only road safety, but also physical safety," he said as reported by Reuters.

The company has also been offering paid rides in driverless minivans outside Phoenix since October 2020 and hauling goods in semi-autonomous trucks in Texas for several months.

In September, Waymo and rival Cruise, backed by General Motors Co. received one of two regulatory permits to offer autonomous rides to passengers in California.

Early next year, Waymo will ship groceries ordered from one of its Safeway stores in San Francisco to select Waymo and Safeway employees.