The vision of cities with fleets of robotic vehicles is approaching reality much more slowly than many representatives of the auto industry had at times hoped.
But Waymo, the sister company of the Internet group Google in the Alphabet Holding, which specializes in autonomous driving, has now reached another milestone.
The company announced that it will offer a taxi service with self-driving cars for the first time in San Francisco as part of a test program.
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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For Waymo this is the second market after the city of Phoenix in the state of Arizona, but it represents a far greater challenge. Phoenix, with its large roads and dry and predictable weather, is a comparatively easy test area for autonomous driving, San Francisco is much more complex.
Waymo has been testing its autonomous driving technology here since 2009, when it was still a project under the umbrella of Google.
Driver still on board
In the beginning of the robotic cars in San Francisco, there is still a driver on board who can intervene if necessary. This is how Waymo started its taxi service in Phoenix. Last year, the company went a step further there, and since then it has been allowing its robot taxis to travel completely autonomously without a driver. Waymo plans to use self-driving versions of Jaguar's I-PACE electric car in San Francisco. The offer is to be free of charge and initially made available to a limited number of test persons who agree to give feedback afterwards.
Autonomous driving is seen as a promising field, but after the initial euphoria in the industry, some sobriety has spread when it comes to its use on a broad front. There have been setbacks, such as a fatal accident involving a robotic car operated by the Uber driver service, and many projects have been delayed. For example, General Motors had planned to operate a fleet of robot taxis in San Francisco with its autonomous driving subsidiary in 2019, but this has not happened to this day. Uber and Lyft have separated from their autonomous driving businesses.
Waymo was long funded by Google and then Alphabet, but last year the company also began raising money from outside investors. It wasn't until June that another round of funding was announced that brought Waymo $ 2.5 billion. As the Wall Street Journal writes, citing former managers, this is said to have been the penultimate round of financing before an IPO.