JAKARTA The autonomous taxi company Waymo has opened a fully driverless ride-hail service in downtown Phoenix. This service can be used for all members of society in general in efforts to expand technology significantly in big cities.
The news comes a day after Waymo obtained driverless taxi deployment permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, allowing Waymo to charge autonomous services, such as deliveries, in San Francisco, and this is a step towards the full deployment of driverless taxis in the state.
Waymo, Google's parent subsidiary, Alphabet, has previously operated a driverless taxi service in downtown Phoenix for people on the 'trusted tester' program.
The time has come: #WaymoOne is now open to the public in Downtown Phoenix. And this is just the beginning… https://t.co/heV3dki3e5
— Waymo (@Waymo) November 10, 2022
Trusted testers are prohibited from sharing their experiences on social media or with journalists and must sign a confidentiality agreement.
Waymo's bidding in downtown Phoenix will allow anyone who downloads the app and asks for a ride in the Waymo service area to pay what the company calls a'special driver' experience in one of its Jaguar's I-Face EV fleets.
As reported by TechCrunch, earlier this month, Waymo also launched a vehicle, but still with the driver in the front seat, to Phoenix airport from the city center.
Waymo currently has more than 700 vehicles in its fleet, which includes a mixed Jaguar I-Pace EV and Chrysleranifold Pacifica Hybrid and a Class 8 truck.
Most of these vehicles are located in Arizona, California, and Texas and are used in commercial testing and operations.
Waymo plans to expand to other parts of Phoenix in the coming months. It is likely to make driverless offers to and from the airport to its own employees first and then trusted testers, then the offering to the public follows.
However, the company still has a number of obstacles that must be overcome before the technology is widely released and adopted by the public.
For example, Waymo still needs to get a driverless taxi permit from California's Public Utilities Commission before it can start billing customers to drive fully autonomous vehicles in the state.
In August, the fully driverless Waymo taxi service covered California's Eastern Valley covering parts of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Tempe. In that area, the service has covered more than 500,000 autonomous miles and has completed tens of thousands of trips in driver-only mode since October 2020.
At the time it was only open to trusted testers, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego shared his experience with services on Twitter.
I had the opportunity to travel my only first driver with fully autonomous driving technology #WaymoDriver @Waymo.I can't wait for you to experience it yourself! Look at Waymo One's app to learn more.
This latest expansion comes after an accident in previous years involving autonomous vehicles.
According to NHTSA, Alphabet Waymo self-driving car unit reported 62 accidents over the past year. Meanwhile, General Motors with Cruise products, which are used in San Francisco as driverless taxis, also has 23 reports of accidents.
The cars produced by Elon Musk's Tesla were also involved in most of the incident, as many as 273 of the 392, which occurred between July 1, 2021, and May 15 this year. Although Tesla accounts for about 70 percent of the crash, automakers have made much larger parts of all self-driving vehicles or assist-driving currently on American roads.
Between June 2021 and May 2022, Waymo reported a total of 19,625 trips in San Francisco and said it had tens of thousands on the waiting list of trusted testers there. Waymo is required to submit a quarterly travel report to the California Public Utilities Commission.
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