Skip to main content

Waymo doubles service area for its robotaxi rides

Waymo is expanding the service area for its robotaxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, and San Francisco, California, paving the way for longer trips across more communities.

In a blog post on Thursday, May 4, Alphabet-owned Waymo said it’s doubling its service area in Phoenix and as a result now serves 180 square miles of The Valley, an expansion that it claims makes it “the largest fully autonomous service area in the world.”

Recommended Videos

It’s also nearly four times the size of the initial service area when its robotaxi service opened to the public in 2020 following years of testing.

The enlargement of the service area covers Scottsdale for the first time, almost all of Tempe, and gives additional access to Chandler and Mesa.

Waymo coverage maps for Phoenix, Arizona.
Left: Waymo’s robotaxi service area in Phoenix in December 2022, and right, in May 2023. Waymo

Waymo said that regular folks in the new and existing coverage locations can hail a ride with the Waymo One app, “whether they’re Arizona State University students commuting between campuses or pin-seeking golfers on vacation.”

The company’s expansion in San Francisco is a little more limited but that’s partly because its service already covers almost all of the peninsula, with its autonomous cars now making it to Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach.

Waymo is still waiting for permission from regulators to open up its robotaxi service in San Francisco to one and all, so for now, only those enrolled in Waymo’s Trusted Testers program can book one of its self-driving taxis.

Waymo also revealed that it’s currently operating more than 10,000 trips per week to public riders via the Waymo One app, and is aiming to increase this to 100,000 trips by the summer of 2024.

“Waymo One remains the only and largest 24/7 fully autonomous ride-hailing service in the world, serving thousands of rides in multiple key markets, and we’re scaling quickly,” said Saswat Panigrahi, Waymo’s chief product officer. “These latest expansions in Metro Phoenix and San Francisco will help us provide more trips to more riders in more places, and are a big step forward on the road to growing our business.”

The company is intent on continuing to improve its technology, with recent enhancements including improved hand gesture detection, more versatile multi-point maneuvers, and improvements to driving performance in challenging weather conditions.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Waymo, Nexar present AI-based study to protect ‘vulnerable’ road users
waymo data vulnerable road users ml still  1 ea18c3

Robotaxi operator Waymo says its partnership with Nexar, a machine-learning tech firm dedicated to improving road safety, has yielded the largest dataset of its kind in the U.S., which will help inform the driving of its own automated vehicles.

As part of its latest research with Nexar, Waymo has reconstructed hundreds of crashes involving what it calls ‘vulnerable road users’ (VRUs), such as pedestrians walking through crosswalks, biyclists in city streets, or high-speed motorcycle riders on highways.

Read more
The UK’s Wayve brings its AI automated driving software to U.S. shores
wayve ai automated driving us driver assist2 1920x1152 1

It might seem that the autonomous driving trend is moving at full speed and on its own accord, especially if you live in California.Wayve, a UK startup that has received over $1 billion in funding, is now joining the crowded party by launching on-road testing of its AI learning system on the streets of San Francisco and the Bay Area.The announcement comes just weeks after Tesla unveiled its Robotaxi at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California. It was also in San Francisco that an accident last year forced General Motors’ robotaxi service Cruise to stop its operations. And it’s mostly in California that Waymo, the only functioning robotaxi service in the U.S., first deployed its fleet of self-driving cars. As part of its move, Wayve opened a new office in Silicon Valley to support its U.S. expansion and AI development. Similarly to Tesla’s Full-Self Driving (FSD) software, the company says it’s using AI to provide automakers with a full range of driver assistance and automation features.“We are now testing our AI software in real-world environments across two continents,” said Alex Kendall, Wayve co-founder and CEO.The company has already conducted tests on UK roads since 2018. It received a huge boost earlier this year when it raised over $1 billion in a move led by Softbank and joined by Microsoft and Nvidia. In August, Uber also said it would invest to help the development of Wayve’s technology.Just like Tesla’s FSD, Wayve’s software provides an advanced driver assistance system that still requires driver supervision.Before driverless vehicles can legally hit the road, they must first pass strict safety tests.So far, Waymo’s technology, which relies on pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar, and lidar (a laser-light radar), is the only of its kind to have received the nod from U.S. regulators.

Read more
Tesla’s Elon Musk unveils the Cybercab robotaxi — and also the Robovan
Tesla's robotaxi.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has just taken the wraps off a prototype of the automaker’s long-awaited robotaxi.

Tesla’s CEO performed the unveiling at a special event at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California, on Thursday night after being driven to the stage by the new autonomous vehicle. The "Cybercab," as Musk is calling it, sports a futuristic look and comes with butterfly doors that open upwards. The electric vehicle has ditched the steering wheel and pedals, and uses inductive charging instead of a plug. You can see the driverless Cybercab in action in the video below:

Read more