Self-driving taxis launch in Phoenix
SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology.
Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that will put a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction.
The service debuting Wednesday marks a significant milestone for Waymo, a company that began as a secretive project within Google in 2009. Since then, its cars have robotically logged more 10 million miles on public roads in 25 cities in California, Arizona, Washington, Michigan and Georgia while getting into only a few accidents — mostly fender benders.
The company is initially operating the new service cautiously, underscoring the challenges still facing its autonomous vehicles as they navigate around vehicles with human drivers who don’t always follow the same rules as robots.
The service, dubbed Waymo One, at first will only be available to a couple hundred riders, all of whom had already been participating in a free pilot program that began in April 2017. It will be confined to a roughly 100-square-mile area in and around Phoenix, including the neighboring cities of Chandler, Tempe, Waymo, a Google subsidiary, has been testing its self-driving cars since 2009 and is finally launching a small-scale commercial venture with the technology. The ride-hailing service in Phoenix will include human drivers behind the wheel who can take control if needed.
Mesa and Gilbert.
Although Waymo has been driving passengers without any humans behind the wheel in its free pilot program, it decided to be less daring with the new commercial service.
“Self-driving technology is new to many, so we’re proceeding carefully with the comfort and convenience of our riders in mind,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik wrote in Wednesday blog post heralding the arrival of the new service.
The ride-hailing service is launching in the same area where a car using robotic technology from ride-hailing service Uber hit and killed a pedestrian crossing a darkened street in Tempe, Arizona, seven months ago. That fatal collision attracted worldwide attention and cast a pall over the entire self-driving car industry as more people began to publicly question the safety of the vehicles.
“I suspect the Uber fatality has caused Waymo to slow down its pace a bit” and use human drivers in its ride-hailing service, said Navigant Research analyst Sam Abuelsamid. “If people keep dying, there will be a bigger backlash against these vehicles.”
The Uber robotic car had a human safety driver behind the wheel, but that wasn’t enough to prevent its lethal accident in March.
Waymo eventually plans to open its new ride-hailing app to all comers in the Phoenix area, although it won’t say when. It also wants to expand its service to other cities, but isn’t saying where. When that happens, it could pose a threat to Uber and the second most popular U.S. ride-hailing service, Lyft, especially since it should be able charge lower prices without the need to share revenue with a human driver in control at all times.