Skip to main content

Waymo’s robotaxis are coming to Uber’s ridesharing app

Uber will soon offer rides in Waymo’s autonomous vehicles using the regular Uber app. It will also integrate with Uber Eats for meal delivery.

Announced on Tuesday, the service will begin toward the end of the year in the Metro Phoenix area, where Waymo is already offering driverless rides for paying passengers through its Waymo One app. Earlier this month, Waymo said it was doubling its service area in Phoenix to serve 180 square miles of The Valley, an expansion that it said makes it “the largest fully autonomous service area in the world.”

Two people exit a Waymo taxi.
Waymo

Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, said that by working together with Uber, the two companies will be well-placed to speed up the pace of development for fully autonomous driving.

“We’re excited to offer another way for people to experience the enjoyable and life-saving benefits of full autonomy,” Mawakana said. “Uber has long been a leader in human-operated ridesharing, and the pairing of our pioneering technology and all-electric fleet with their customer network provides Waymo with an opportunity to reach even more people.”

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said his company is looking forward to bringing fully autonomous driving to its platform.

“Uber provides access to a global and reliable marketplace across mobility, delivery, and freight,” Khosrowshahi said. “Fully autonomous driving is quickly becoming part of everyday life, and we’re excited to bring Waymo’s incredible technology to the Uber platform.”

Earlier this month, Waymo 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. Its partnership with Uber should give it a decent shot at achieving this goal.

The tie-up marks a further improvement in relations between the two companies, which five years ago saw Waymo accuse Uber of stealing important autonomous technology trade secrets for its own, now defunct, driverless-car project. Uber and Waymo settled out of court in 2018, and two years later engineer Anthony Levandowski — who worked for Waymo (then Google) before launching self-driving trucking firm Otto and selling it to Uber — was handed an 18-month prison term for trade secret theft.

The latest collaboration follows an earlier one between Uber and Waymo announced last year involving Waymo’s self-driving technology and Uber’s truck-based freight network.

Editors' Recommendations

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)…
Cruise’s robot taxis head to Arizona and Texas
A passenger getting into a Cruise robotaxi.

Cruise’s autonomous cars are heading to Texas and Arizona before the end of this year.

The General Motors-owned company plans to launch ridesharing pilots in Austin and Phoenix in what will be its first expansion of the service outside of San Francisco.

Read more
Ex-Apple employee pleads guilty to nabbing Apple Car secrets
The Apple logo is displayed at the Apple Store June 17, 2015 on Fifth Avenue in New York City

A former Apple employee on Monday pled guilty to the theft of trade secrets from the tech firm.

The material stolen by Xiaolang Zhang was linked to Apple’s work on its first-ever automobile, a project that’s been in and out of the headlines for years though never officially confirmed by the company.

Read more
Check out Baidu’s futuristic robotaxi
Baidu's next-generation autonomous robotaxi.

Chinese tech giant Baidu says its next-generation autonomous taxi features the capabilities of a "skilled driver with 20 years of experience.”

The Beijing-based company, which operates a ridesharing service similar to Uber’s, unveiled the all-electric Apollo RT6 at a special event on Wednesday, July 20.

Read more