San Francisco (AFP)
Already on the roads of Arizona, in the southwest of the United States, the autonomous cars of Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, will circulate in Texas and New Mexico this week in order to explore "new solutions transportation, "the company said on Twitter on Thursday.
The Chrysler Pacifica minivans and trucks used by the start-up will rely on the current project in the state of Arizona to travel on these new roads, says Waymo.
The company has offered a "robotaxis" service, Waymo One Brand, for about a year in Chandler, Arizona. A human, called a "safety driver", is nevertheless in the driver's seat to take control in an emergency. An application allows you to call the vehicle to circulate within a defined perimeter.
However, Waymo wants to go further and since last summer has offered this service to subscribers in Phoenix and its suburbs: trips without a human behind the wheel, free in the afternoon and sometimes in the evening.
"These are interesting and promising trade routes, and we will use our vehicles to explore ways for the Waymo driver to create new transport solutions," said the company.
Born in a Google laboratory, Waymo became in 2016 a wholly-owned subsidiary.
Autonomous technology can be used by trucks over long distances, because highways and expressways offer fewer variables to manage than city streets.
Waymo competitor Uber announced in a statement Thursday that vehicles with two drivers will be on the streets of Washington, the federal capital, starting Friday to "collect data to support the development of autonomous technology ".
An autonomous Uber car was implicated in a fatal accident in March 2018, which had forced most of the groups involved in this technology to reassess their security systems.
By the end of 2019, Hyundai had become the first car manufacturer to set up autonomous routes on the American market.
© 2020 AFP