Competition among the driverless companies is ratcheting up as the technology for self-driving is improving and regulators are giving the green light
Waymo, Alphabet's (GOOGL) self-driving division, began picking up passengers in downtown Phoenix recently. Mayor Kate Gallego even took a ride to test out the option on Aug. 29 in a in a Jaguar I-Pace EV.
Downtown Phoenix is the third location that Waymo offers rider-only trips—"nobody in the driver’s seat—to members of the public. That’s after Phoenix’s East Valley and SF," Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo's co-CEO wrote on Twitter on Sept. 12.
Testing of Waymo's driverless cars continues in San Francisco.
"More testers are riding with Waymo in SF," she tweeted. "For hundreds in the city, catching an autonomous Waymo is as normal as going grocery shopping. They’ve done it tens of thousands of times this year. Here’s Candace, headed to Mission Dolores Park the other week."
Employees had tested out the robotaxis in downtown Phoenix before the driverless rides were available, Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said in May during a Tech Crunch conference.
Waymo has spent the past year testing out fully autonomous rides in San Francisco.
Waymo said on Sept. 12 it has been a year since "we welcomed our first public riders in SF as part of our Trusted Tester program," in a tweet.
Waymo started the deployment of its technology in the East Valley of Phoenix, starting with its Early Rider Program, which is now called Trusted Tester, in 2017. The fully autonomous public rides began in 2020.
Cruise To Move Into Waymo's Robotaxi Territory
Now Cruise, an autonomous vehicle company whose majority shareholder is General Motors (GM), has expanded its driverless rides into Phoenix, which had been Waymo's territory.
Cruise's other partners are Honda, Walmart and Microsoft (MSFT) in this adventure.
The company is expanding into Phoenix and Austin later in 2022, Kyle Vogt, CEO and Co-founder at Cruise, said on Sept. 12 via Twitter.
He estimates that rides will begin in about three months. There are not any vehicles testing currently in Austin, but the company has been planning to expand for at least two years, Vogt said.
"We’ve been prepping for scaling the last couple years, glad to see that work paying off," he wrote on Twitter.
Cruise obtained approval from the California Public Utilities Commission on June 2 to operate robotaxis in San Francisco. These self-driving vehicles can carry people to and from any location in the city from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and only when there’s no "heavy rain, heavy fog, heavy smoke, hail, sleet, or snow.”
The driverless cars can only drive at a maximum speed of 30 mph.
Lee Edwards, a partner at Root Ventures, took a ride in a Chevy Bolt on Aug. 30 in San Francisco.
Tesla Never Delivered 1 Million Robotaxis
Although Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has been talking about robotaxis since 2019, the electric vehicle maker has not been able to offer this feature. He had said there would be one million robotaxis hitting the streets by the end of 2020.
During the annual meeting earlier in 2022, stating Tesla should be able to offer full self-driving "to anyone who requests it by the end of the year."
He has been a big proponent of autonomous vehicles, touting them in January during Tesla's fourth-quarter earnings call, saying "I would be shocked if we do not achieve full-self-driving safer than a human this year."
Musk first promised in 2016 that full autonomous driving would be available by 2018. Although the EV maker has made hands-off-the-wheel freeway driving available, Tesla has not achieved the dream of getting a car to drive itself on city streets.
