When you’ve been eager to hop in a robotaxi in San Francisco, Waymo has excellent news.
At the moment, the corporate took to X (previously Twitter) to announce that it’s increasing its robotaxi service into extra areas of the town. In keeping with the publish, the corporate’s automobiles will now be working in nearly 50 sq. miles of San Francisco. The expanded service begins immediately for patrons utilizing Waymo One, the corporate’s totally autonomous ride-hailing service.
In an announcement to The Verge, Waymo spokesperson Christopher Bonelli stated that not everybody in these areas will have the ability to join and instantly get entry to the robotaxis in these new areas. In keeping with Bonelli, the corporate continues to be including clients from a waitlist. Clients who’re already utilizing the service, nevertheless, get rapid entry to the newly expanded service areas.
“This territory growth applies to these riders who at present have entry to our service and all these to be added from the waitlist within the close to future. We’re nonetheless seeing very robust demand, so we need to scale responsibly to take care of service high quality and good consumer expertise.”
The information comes a day earlier than Waymo will begin working its robotaxis in and round Los Angeles to kick off its “Waymo One Tour.” Over the subsequent few months, the corporate will probably be holding “early entry” occasions in numerous cities for residents to check out the totally autonomous ride-hailing service. Under is an inventory of the cities and dates Waymo will probably be holding occasions:
- Santa Monica: October 11, 2023 by way of October 18, 2023
- Century Metropolis: November 20, 2023 by way of December 17, 2023
- WeHo: December 17, 2023 by way of January 7, 2024
- Mid Metropolis: January 8, 2024 by way of January 23, 2024
- Okay-City: January 24, 2024 by way of February 8, 2024
- DTLA: February 9, 2024 by way of March 3, 2024
San Fransisco and Los Angeles aren’t the one cities to see Waymo working in additional areas this fall. The corporate additionally introduced plans to start out working the robotaxi service in Austin, Texas — particularly “central and East Austin, together with downtown, Rainey Road, Clarksville, Bouldin Creek, the Market District, Holly, and the Capitol.”
As Waymo continues to increase, different robotaxi corporations like Cruise are additionally rising. Even Elon Musk has promised that Tesla homeowners will ultimately have the ability to ship out their very own autos as robotaxis to earn them cash sooner or later. I personally can’t wait to check out a robotaxi service. Convey me that robotic.
