[AutonomousVehicles] waymo expanding to los angeles

[Cornelius Butler]

Hi Everyone,
Waymo is expanding to Los Angeles. The article link and text is below.

Article Link:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/19/23410677/waymo-los-angeles-autonomous-robotaxi-service-launch

Article Text:

Waymo eyes traffic-choked Los Angeles for its next robotaxi service / Would
you rather be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in your own car or in the
backseat of a driverless Waymo vehicle? LA residents, choose your fighter.

By ANDREW J. HAWKINS / @andyjayhawk

Oct 19, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC|

Waymo is bringing its Waymo One robotaxi service to Los Angeles, a city of
endless freeways, legendary traffic jams, and many pressing transportation
needs that are unlikely to be addressed by adding more cars.

Waymo currently operates robotaxis in two cities: Phoenix and San
Francisco. The company is one of a handful trying to launch a widescale
commercial service built around autonomous vehicles, like Amazon’s Zoox,
Argo AI (which is backed by Ford and Volkswagen), and Cruise (which is
backed by General Motors and Honda).

LA isn’t uncharted territory for Waymo; the company has been mapping the
city’s various neighborhoods, including downtown LA and the Miracle Mile,
since 2019 — though it says it has yet to drive autonomously in the city.
When it launches, Waymo expects to operate in those neighborhoods in
addition to Koreatown, Santa Monica, Westwood, and West Hollywood.

As for when that will be, a spokesperson declined to say, noting that it
would likely take “months” before residents would be able to hail one of
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles through the company’s smartphone app.

Waymo says it will follow its traditional playbook of deploying its
vehicles in autonomous mode with a human safety driver behind the wheel
before transitioning into a commercially available service. To start out,
those vehicles will only be available to Waymo employees and later to
members of the public once the company is convinced they can operate safely
and effectively.

When it gets there, Waymo’s robotaxi service will look similar to what’s
currently available in San Francisco and Phoenix, which the company touts
as involving “no NDAs, remote operators or pre-defined pick-ups.”

In other words, the service will eventually grow to include regular
customers who are free to speak publicly (and post on social media) about
their experiences using Waymo’s autonomous vehicles — just as they do in
the suburban towns outside of Phoenix. That can result in some embarrassing
headlines, such as when a driverless Waymo van got stuck at an intersection
in Chandler, prompting the company to send a roadside assistance team to
come extract it.

San Francisco residents have also witnessed some confusing behavior from
Waymo’s vehicles, like when dozens of the company’s AVs kept getting stuck
at the end of a dead-end street in the Richmond district last year.

For Waymo, LA represents its biggest and possibly most challenging market
to date: a metropolitan area of 13 million people that Waymo describes as
rife with “roads that include criss-crossing freeway ramps, narrow surface
streets, [a] high number of unprotected left turns, blinding sunsets down
its east-west roads, and distracted drivers.”

As a moneymaking operation, LA represents “an estimated market opportunity
of $2 billion in 2022,” Waymo notes. The company has revenue coming in from
its two ride-hailing markets, but it hasn’t raised any external financing
since a $2.5 billion round in June 2021.

Under California state law, AV companies need to obtain a permit from the
state Department of Motor Vehicles in order to test self-driving vehicles
on public roads. After that, all they need to do to start testing in a city
is inform the appropriate local authorities. Cities then would have to
negotiate specific agreements, such as data sharing, on a case-by-case
basis.

Waymo has been testing AVs in and around Silicon Valley for over a decade,
dating back to when it was still just a quirky project inside Google’s X
division. In 2017, the company launched a limited ridehail service outside
of Phoenix, which eventually grew to include over 300 vehicles.

That’s how things stayed for several years, with Waymo meticulously
focusing its efforts on a small service area in Arizona. Eventually, the
company expanded its testing near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to
include the dense, complex streets of San Francisco.

And soon, it will grow again to include LA. Waymo won’t comment on where it
will go after that. The company has tested or is currently testing its
vehicles in Michigan, Texas, Washington state, and New York City.

Of course, many residents believe that LA doesn’t need more cars.
Congestion in the city is arguably worse than ever, pedestrian deaths are
on the rise, and the city’s leaders have done little to stem the chaos.
Waymo says its cars are safer, but they’re still cars that occupy the same
amount of space as human-driven vehicles.

Waymo isn’t the only AV company with its vehicles prowling the streets of
LA. Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, is also testing
its vehicles in the city, primarily in Santa Monica, for future robotaxi
and delivery services.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/autonomousvehicles_nfbnet.org/attachments/20221026/3e26c249/attachment.html>