Waymo Expands Autonomous Taxi Service to Silicon Valley with 24/7 Operations

Waymo has made an expansion of its autonomous taxi service in Silicon Valley, offering 24/7 robotaxi rides to certain customers within a 27-square-mile area. The service area includes Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale. First, the robotaxis will be invite-only to a limited number of users whose zip codes fall within the service area. The company plans to incrementally increase riders over time, asking users to monitor the Waymo One app for updates on access.This is a milestone for Waymo because Silicon Valley is where the company was founded. Waymo was once part of Google’s sprawling research and development headquarters, X, located near the Googleplex campus. The project began as Google’s self-driving car project in 2009 and expanded to become an independent company named Waymo in 2016. The company relocated to its own headquarters in Mountain View, returning full circle with the launch of a commercial, fully autonomous robotaxi service in the Valley.
Waymo Chief Product Officer Saswat Panigrahi highlighted the significance of the rollout, stating that it is a wonderful milestone for them in the Bay Area. The service aims to provide smooth rides, make roads safer, and promote eco-friendly travel within the community.
So far, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were primarily reserved for company staff to use for Silicon Valley commutes. This new development is separate from Waymo’s publicly accessible 24/7 robotaxi service a short distance north of San Francisco. Waymo One, the company’s ride-sharing app, will offer these automated rides, similar to other cities, including Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have demonstrated a high safety rate, with significantly fewer insurance claims of property damage and physical injury than human-driven vehicles. The company continues to expand its services, and it will partner with Uber in cities like Austin and Atlanta. With this partnership, Uber riders are matched with Waymo robotaxis within specified service areas.
In Los Angeles, Waymo has a fleet of over 100 autonomous vehicles cruising around an area from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. Waymo drove nearly 2 million miles in Los Angeles and will soon ride on freeways, beginning with employee-only use. The company is confident that it can reduce traffic accidents and deaths with its driverless technology, which it refers to as “the world’s most experienced driver.”
Even as Waymo remains out front when it comes to self-driving transportation, it has some competitors in companies like Zoox that are running test drives of autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. Waymo is still out front, however, with more than 25 million autonomous miles driven and being the only robotaxi service on the road in California to have transitioned from testing to commercial.