The article says that they've been preparing for awhile, but they are now looking to start commercial service.
Waymo has had a small fleet of vehicles mapping the streets of LA since at least 2019, but it only began to make preparations for a commercial service in recent months. Aside from mapping, Waymo has been following its traditional playbook of deploying its vehicles in autonomous mode with a human safety driver behind the wheel before transitioning into a commercially available service.
Haven’t they been running in LA for many months now?
The article says that they've been preparing for awhile, but they are now looking to start commercial service.
Must have been test drives then, seen them driving around a bunch for a while now. LA is gonna be a real test of its capabilities for sure!