Image: © Larry Gibson/Stock.adobe.com
The latest approval expands Waymo’s reach to include the San Francisco freeways and opens a route to the city’s international airport located in the south.
Waymo has received approval to significantly expand its driverless taxi operations in the state of California.
A letter from California’s Public Utilities Commission sent to the Alphabet-owned company states that it now has the right to deploy and charge for driverless taxi rides in new parts of the San Francisco Peninsula as well as, for the first time, Los Angeles.
Waymo was one of two companies, the other being General Motors-owned Cruise, that were given the green light to operate driverless taxis 24/7 across San Francisco last August in a significant milestone for the autonomous vehicle industry. Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said at the time that the permit “marks the true beginning of our commercial operations in San Francisco”.
This came just a few months after Waymo started offering fully driverless car rides to its employees in San Francisco following its successful operation of a driverless service to the public in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona.
Now, the latest approval expands Waymo’s reach to include the San Francisco freeways and opens a route to the city’s international airport located to the south of the city.
We’re grateful to the @californiapuc for this vote of confidence in our operations, which paves the way for the deployment of our commercial Waymo One service in LA and the SF Peninsula. https://t.co/o54i6WJrhQ
— Waymo (@Waymo) March 1, 2024
But the company’s continued expansion is not without controversy. Last month, Waymo had to issue a voluntary recall of its self-driving software in response to an incident in December when a Waymo vehicle hit a backwards-facing pickup truck. Waymo claimed the truck was being “improperly towed” and was “persistently angled” across a centre turn lane and a traffic lane.
After the two vehicles made contact, neither pulled over or stopped travelling. A second Waymo car then hit the same towed truck a few minutes later.
Waymo reiterated its commitment to safety in response and claimed that its self-driving vehicles reduce the rates of police-reported and injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers.
But the company is facing a backlash against self-driving vehicles in San Francisco, as one of its autonomous cars was set on fire early last month after it drove into a busy intersection during a Chinese New Year celebration.
Rival autonomous vehicle company Cruise, which has been grappling with its own share of problems, recently appointed Steve Kenner as its chief safety officer as part of an effort to rebuild trust in its services.
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