Alphabet’s Waymo announced on Wednesday it has officially started providing driverless robotaxi rides in San Francisco, California.
The driverless rides are only being offered to employees for now, but the company hopes to include members of the general public soon.
“This morning in San Francisco, a fully autonomous all-electric Jaguar I-PACE, with no human driver behind the wheel, picked up a Waymo engineer to get their morning coffee and go to work,” the company said in a blog post.
Waymo announced last week it had reached the significant milestone to move to a fully autonomous solution just six months after expanding to San Francisco.
Waymo Expands to Downtown Phoenix
Along with the announcement for San Francisco, Waymo is also expanding their Waymo One Trusted Tester program to downtown Phoenix.
The program will start with rides only being offered to employees while an “autonomous specialist” is behind the wheel, with the goal to open to the public soon after.
“Our commitment to Phoenix and the community there remains strong, and we’ll soon be expanding to another area: Downtown Phoenix. Just as we’ve done before, we’ll start with Waymo employees hailing trips with autonomous specialists behind the wheel, with the goal of opening it up to members of the public via our Trusted Tester program soon after.”
Waymo has been operating in Arizona since 2017, currently offering a fully autonomous service in the East Valley of Phoenix since 2020.
