Waymo Gets California Clearance to Run Fully Driverless Robotaxis Across 18 Counties, Including Sacramento and San Diego

Summary

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Waymo this week to expand its fully driverless paid robotaxi service across 18 California counties. The approval covers the full Bay Area and Los Angeles, where Waymo already operates, and opens two new markets: Sacramento and San Diego. Waymo says San Diego service is expected later this summer, with Sacramento following after additional validation. The approved operating conditions cover all road types, including freeways, city streets, rural roads, and parking lots, essentially at any time of day, in rain, fog, and hail. Waymo is currently running around 50,000 fully driverless rides per week across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

Why it matters

For those in Sacramento or San Diego, a fully driverless Waymo is now just months away. For everyone else, this is the kind of regulatory milestone that has not occurred at this scale in the US before: a single approval covering 18 counties and major new markets simultaneously. The era of robotaxis as a routine transportation option is arriving faster than most people realize.

HTD Says

Waymo just got approval to run fully driverless robotaxis across 18 California counties, and if you are in Sacramento or San Diego, you could be ordering one before the end of the year. If you dig into the announcement and the coverage area, it is truly amazing how extensive the potential coverage is. The San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego, not to mention Sacramento, are massive areas that will require an equally large number of autonomous vehicles.

I have to make a confession. Even though I live in the SF Bay Area and am extremely tech-forward (or at least, I like to believe that I am), I have YET to take a Waymo. And as a Gen X-er, all of this tech truly lives up to what seemed to have been predicted in The Jetsons, Dick Tracy, and Star Trek. I love it!

Regardless, there will still be the debate about autonomous vehicles (Waymo & Tesla) versus ridesharing services like Lyft and Uber and good ol’ fashioned taxi services. They will continue to compete, some more than others. And there are also us “regular” drivers. The only way, in my opinion, to make the roads truly safe would be to have 100% autonomous vehicles (or road infrastructure dedicated solely to that). As soon as you introduce humans into that mix, driving becomes truly unpredictable. But that is many, many years off.

Source:

Electrek