Waymo currently offers greater than 100,000 paid robotaxi rides per week within the US, in line with a LinkedIn Announcement by Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. That is double the 50,000 paid weekly rides that the corporate reported in May.
A spokesman for the alphabet-owned self-driving vehicle company told CNBC on Tuesday that San Francisco now “does the most driving” of the cities where Waymo operates its business service, namely San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles.
Last month, Alphabet announced it will invest a further $5 billion in Waymo, which began as the corporate's self-driving automobile project in 2009.
On Monday, Waymo announced details of its latest “Generation 6” self-driving system, which is able to enable the corporate to supply driverless services in a wider range of weather conditions while requiring fewer expensive cameras and sensors in its vehicles.
Waymo, whose fleet currently consists of around 700 vehicles, operates the one business robotaxi service within the United States, Waymo One.
Waymo previously partnered with ride-hailing giant Uber in Phoenix to supply its service to the app's existing users there. In an announcement Tuesday, Waymo said it expanded its service area in Phoenix by 90 square miles in June, making it the biggest autonomous ride-hailing “area” within the States.
This month, Waymo also expanded its robotaxi service in San Francisco to 3 latest areas in California – Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma – and is currently testing its self-driving vehicles on highways across the San Francisco metropolitan area.
While CNBC couldn’t independently confirm the corporate's safety claims, Waymo also shared that “over 23.6 million miles driven alone, the Waymo driver was 3.5 times better at avoiding injury crashes and three times better at avoiding police-reported crashes than human drivers.”
Although business robotaxi services from Didi and Pony.ai Although Waymo is already operating in China, it currently faces limited domestic competition. GMThe company's Cruise, which is owned by the corporation, suffered setbacks that temporarily kept its self-driving vehicles off the road, and corporations like Uber and Ford halted efforts to develop robotaxis.
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturer, Teslahas been promising for years that it may turn customers' existing vehicles into self-driving cars with a software update. However, the corporate has yet to provide a automobile that may function a robotaxis. Tesla plans to unveil its CyberCab, a dedicated robotaxis, at a highly anticipated event on October 10.
image credit : www.cnbc.com