(Credit: Waymo)
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Waymo autonomous cars can now ride on highways in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, meaning the app will no longer route cars on backroads to avoid the freeway.
When we tried a Waymo in Los Angeles last month, the trips took about 10-15 minutes longer than indicated on Google Maps because they avoided freeways, making Lyfts or Ubers with human driver a more attractive option when in a rush. That problem is now solved for three of the five cities where Waymo operates.
"Achieving fully autonomous freeway operations is a profound engineering feat—easy to conceive, yet hard to truly master," says Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov. "This milestone is a powerful testament to the maturity of our operations and technology."
Waymo has been testing freeway trips for over a year with employees and guests as passengers, a company spokesperson tells us. The software behind the cars, the Waymo Driver, has also racked up "millions of autonomous miles," as well as performed "closed-course validation, and extensive simulation testing to ensure a safe, reliable rider experience."
Riders will still call a car through the Waymo app, where they can indicate their interest for taking freeway routes. The software will program a route that includes them when it is "meaningfully faster," Waymo says.
The remaining two major cities Waymo services, Austin and Atlanta, do not yet have access to freeway routes. The company plans to introduce them there over time. In those cities, Waymo allows riders to call a car through the Uber app.
Also today, Waymo expanded its San Francisco Bay Area service to San Jose, including curbside access at San Jose Mineta International Airport. Many major tech companies have offices in the area, including Apple, IBM, Nvidia, and Google, so their employees may now enjoy an autonomous ride to work. It's also testing (with a human driver) at San Francisco International.
The Alphabet-owned company continues to operate in a league of its own, with no major competition following the demise of GM's Cruise robotaxis. Tesla has a small fleet of 10 to 20 Model Y robotaxis in Austin, with plans to get to 500 by the end of the year, and another 1,000 in San Francisco, Teslarati reports. In California, Tesla will have a human monitor behind the wheel until it obtains the permits to operate without one. It's also applied to do the same in Phoenix.