Waymo Expands Rideshare Service to Passenger Mode in Major Cities
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Waymo announced today that any riders can now be passengers in its Ojai model vehicles in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. In a social media post, the company highlighted the spaciousness and backseat entertainment features in the driverless vans. The Google-owned brand began offering limited pickups with this purpose-built robotaxi in the same three cities earlier this year.
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TechCrunchFor now, customers in these markets may be matched with the new robotaxi, called the Ojai (pronounced oh-hi) when they hail a ride. Once Waymo has enough Ojais in its fleet, riders will be able to choose between the new vehicle and the older Jaguar I-Pace robotaxi. Waymo has about 300 Ojai robotaxis in its commercial fleet today, according to a company spokesperson.
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Over the past two weeks, all 170 Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin monitored by the crowdsourced Robotaxi Tracker were unsupervised, the site’s creator, Ethan McKanna, told The Verge. Those rides involved 54 different cars. McKanna has also seen a sharp increase in unsupervised Robotaxis elsewhere, particularly Dallas and Houston, where roughly 30 driverless Teslas have been operating over the past week.
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EngadgetThis news isn't coming from Musk or anyone from Tesla, which gives it more credence. The information comes from a crowdsourced web app called Robotaxi Tracker. The site's creator, Ethan McKanna, told The Verge that all 170 Tesla Robotaxi rides in Austin monitored by the app in the past two weeks were unsupervised, which involved 54 different vehicles. This is further corroborated by folks on social media.
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Even after the jump in unsupervised Robotaxis, Tesla remains far behind its biggest robotaxi competitor. Waymo operates more than 300 driverless vehicles in Austin alone, and has around 4,000 vehicles across 10 other cities.
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EngadgetIt's also worth noting that this increase in autonomous rides may be an important milestone for Tesla, but it's just a blip in the overall industry. Waymo, for instance, operates more than 300 driverless vehicles in Austin, with about 4,000 vehicles running in numerous other cities.
3 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 TechCrunch For years, Waymo has relied on the all-electric, modified Jaguar I-Pace for its robotaxi fleet, which now operates in 11 U.S. cities today. While the white, sensor-laden autonomous hatchback has become ubiquitous in markets such as San Francisco, it has been more of a stopgap in Waymo’s longer term push towards mass scale, and eventually, profitability.
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02 Engadget However, the company isn't beyond smoke and mirrors when it comes to this kind of thing. It was revealed earlier this year that some Robotaxi rides that appeared to be unsupervised were actually connected to remote human drivers.
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03 The Verge But the Austin shift itself appears to be real. “Austin has seemingly stopped supervised rides for a couple weeks now,” McKanna said. “Plates previously marked as supervised have been confirmed to be offering unsupervised rides.”
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Sources (3)
- verge
- engadget
- techcrunch