Currently, Waymo offers public rides in San Francisco, Phoenix, LA, and Austin, with employee-only rides in Atlanta. The company has also conducted tests in challenging weather conditions in Michigan and upstate New York. In LA, Waymo has started offering rides to staff on freeways, highlighting the complexity of adapting to different road landscapes even within the same state. The expansion comes amid competition from Tesla and regulatory uncertainties, with Waymo focusing on improving its system's ability to operate in diverse urban settings.
Key takeaways:
- Waymo is expanding its driverless car testing to new cities, including San Diego, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC, but public robotaxi rides are not yet available in these locations.
- The aim of testing in new cities is to evaluate the system's ability to adapt to different environments without requiring retraining, a concept known as "generalizability".
- Waymo has started offering rides to employees on LA freeways, highlighting the challenges of different road landscapes even within the same state.
- Waymo plans to conduct manual driving tests in new cities to gather data and improve its autonomous driving technology, but commercial services are not immediately planned for these locations.