The former Google driverless car company will begin charging pre-approved passengers in the Chandler, Arizona area for rides on its self-driving ride-sharing service Wednesday. Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service that will include a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction.
Waymo officials said the robot cars will be offered to the general public “over time,” but will initially start out with just a limited number of people who have been screened and invited by the company.
Waymo has the same parent company as Google, Alphabet Inc. Since April 2017, more than 20,000 people have applied to participate in the Early Rider program, and company said it has accepted “more than 400” participants in the program.
Unfortunately, Arizona is the only market where the program is available, though Waymo officials said they expect to expand it nationally and beyond. In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Dan Chu, Waymo’s head of product, called the Wednesday announcement “a beginning.”
The debut of the new service 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 minor accidents.
The company is still operating the new service cautiously though, finding ways to work around the challenges its autonomous vehicles still face as they navigate around vehicles with human drivers that don’t always follow the same rules as robots.
By: Maytinee Kramer
