SF Chronicle – Waymo eyes S.F. robotaxi expansion, personal vehicles after first-year ‘success’
Editors note: the key point in the article is the “company’s push to turn a profit.” Waymo is currently losing billions of dollars and they cannot continue to provide such a subsidized service. I still predict that by end of 2025 that the accountants of Alphabet will realize that they will never turn a profit with Waymo and that the service will be discontinued.
See original article by Ricardo Cano at SF Chronicle
After a year of commercial driverless ride-hailing in San Francisco under its belt, Waymo says it’s determined to expand faster, with plans to eventually bring its robotaxis to the East Bay and San Jose, as well as Bay Area freeways.
And if the company succeeds in its master plan, the Waymo Driver software powering its driverless robotaxis would be included for other uses such as trucking, deliveries and, eventually, personal vehicles, the company told the Chronicle.
The Mountain View company quietly developed and tested its self-driving cars for years in the Bay Area before the California Public Utilities Commission granted its unrestricted expansion in San Francisco last August. The CPUC’s decision allowing Waymo to commercialize its driverless technology in California for the first time marked the beginning of a high-stakes robotaxi experiment playing out on San Francisco’s public roads in real time.
Since then, the Alphabet-owned company has been allowed to deploy an unlimited number of robotaxis for paid driverless rides in the city at all hours. In March, state regulators allowed the company to expand its commercial ride-hailing to 22 Peninsula cities.
Now, Waymo officials are declaring victory after a year of commercial driverless service without any serious incidents and say it gives them confidence to speed up their robotaxi expansion.
David Margines, Waymo’s director of product management, said in an interview that the company’s one-year track record in San Francisco “is a validation” that its robotaxis can “drive safely” and “coexist in the communities that we want to operate in.”
“Looking back over the year, I’m thrilled to say that it’s been a big success,” he said.
Waymo has scaled its ride-hailing operations deliberately for much of its first year of commercial service. The company, for example, limited access to rides to people approved off a waitlist and for months avoided taking paying riders downtown.
But there’s some evidence that Waymo has already started to move more quickly to expand its emerging business in the Bay Area.
In June, it made its ride-hailing service available to anyone in San Francisco. In August, Waymo expanded its service area beyond city limits to include Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma, and it is testing its robotaxis in other Peninsula cities where its allowed to operate — a vast area that stretches to Sunnyvale.
Waymo also started testing driverless robotaxi rides on San Francisco freeways earlier this month using company employees as passengers.
The company recorded its biggest spike in ride-hailing activity in May, when it reported to state regulators that its robotaxis were logging around 4,300 daily trips in San Francisco. At the time, Waymo said, its robotaxis were completing around 50,000 trips per week in San Francisco, Phoenix (where the company has operated commercially since 2020) and Los Angeles (where it began limited service in April).
Last week, Waymo announced that its robotaxis have eclipsed more than 100,000 weekly paid rides, with San Francisco recording the “greatest increase in trips this summer” and the most out of Waymo’s three markets.
The company touted the milestone as “the first time any fully autonomous ride-hailing service has ever reached this kind of mainstream use.”
But while its robotaxis have been the most visual presence, Waymo officials say that ride-hailing is only the starting point in the company’s push to turn a profit. Alphabet has invested billions of dollars in Waymo, and the company faces pressure to find a profitable business model for its self-driving technology, which the company currently uses to retrofit Jaguars into robotaxis.
Waymo’s artificial intelligence could be retrofitted into long-haul trucks and vehicles for parcel deliveries and personal use. The latter scenario could entail Waymo licensing its technology to car manufacturers, who could have it as a feature included in vehicles for sale — meaning consumers could buy self-driving cars that could, theoretically, take them to work or on long road trips.
Waymo’s driverless ride-hailing experience helps give its artificial intelligence software the real-world experience to prepare its technology for trucking or personal cars, which would require further testing and validation.
“There’s a lot of benefits that come from using ride-hailing as a first use case for the Waymo Driver,” Margines said. “But our goals don’t stop there. If you think about our overall mission of bringing the Waymo Driver to as many vehicle miles traveled as possible, then you’ve got to branch out from that pretty quickly into some of these other environments.”
Margines said the company doesn’t have a timeline for when it plans to integrate its driverless software with long-haul trucks or commercially sold personal cars. Nor did he say when Waymo planned to push for its ride-hailing expansion to the East Bay and San Jose.
Such expansions would require the company’s self-driving software to operate on freeways to offer competitive service, and it’s unclear when Waymo will start bringing paying customers on, say, Interstate 280. Waymo first started testing driverless passenger rides on freeways earlier this year in Phoenix, where the company operates a 315-square-mile service area that includes Sky Harbor International Airport.
The company attracted much skepticism from local officials who feared the company would flood San Francisco streets with robotaxis, like Uber and Lyft did in their advent, if given the opportunity. Firefighters criticized Waymo and Cruise robotaxis for interfering with emergency responses, though such reported incidents have appeared to become less common.
Waymo remains under investigation by federal regulators for a series of incidents that resulted in minor property damage or involved errant driving. The company’s robotaxis have attracted several headlines for their clumsy driving and nuisances, such as a recent series of incidents involving Waymos honking at each other and disrupting sleepy residents in South of Market. The company says it patched a fix for the issue, though residents report that the issue persists.
As Waymo seeks to expand in the Bay Area, it will likely keep encountering opposition from local officials and state lawmakers who want more control over the regulation of self-driving cars. The autonomous vehicle industry has already attracted stiff opposition from organized labor groups, which have lobbied the Legislature to restrict testing and deployment of driverless long-haul trucks.
Next year, lawmakers could revive a failed attempt in Sacramento to give local cities the authority to set the rules over driverless ride-hailing — a significant overhaul of California’s autonomous vehicle regulations fiercely opposed by AV companies. Another bill that would require autonomous vehicle companies to publicly report more performance data, including accidents and unplanned stops, passed the Legislature this week and awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.
Yet, the presence of such legislation — and the increased proliferation of Waymo robotaxis in San Francisco — underscores how self-driving cars have begun to enter the mainstream.
“This was the year when autonomous vehicles became real,” Margines said.
See original article by Ricardo Cano at SF Chronicle
