Meanwhile Cruise is causing traffic jams in Austin.
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Haven’t they been running in LA for many months now?
The article says that they've been preparing for awhile, but they are now looking to start commercial service.
Waymo has had a small fleet of vehicles mapping the streets of LA since at least 2019, but it only began to make preparations for a commercial service in recent months. Aside from mapping, Waymo has been following 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.
Must have been test drives then, seen them driving around a bunch for a while now. LA is gonna be a real test of its capabilities for sure!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Waymo announced a “tour across Los Angeles” that allows curious residents the opportunity to ride in fully autonomous vehicles as the Alphabet-owned company begins to lay the groundwork for the launch of a commercial robotaxi service.
Robotaxi companies in San Francisco have been facing pushback from city officials who oppose their expansion, citing blocked intersections and obstructed emergency vehicles.
Waymo has had a small fleet of vehicles mapping the streets of LA since at least 2019, but it only began to make preparations for a commercial service in recent months.
Aside from mapping, Waymo has been following 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.
For Waymo, LA represents its biggest and possibly most challenging market to date: a metropolitan area of 13 million people with crisscrossing freeway ramps, narrow surface streets, many unprotected left turns, blinding sunsets down its east-west roads, and a plethora of distracted drivers.
Waymo is locked in a tight race with Cruise and other AV companies to get more robot cars on the street so it can start seeing a return on its enormous investment.
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