• Daryl76679@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • dawnerd@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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!

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Waymo announced a “tour across Los Angeles” that allows curious residents the opportunity to ride in fully autonomous vehicles as the Alphabet-owned company begins to lay the groundwork for the launch of a commercial robotaxi service.

    Robotaxi companies in San Francisco have been facing pushback from city officials who oppose their expansion, citing blocked intersections and obstructed emergency vehicles.

    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.

    For Waymo, LA represents its biggest and possibly most challenging market to date: a metropolitan area of 13 million people with crisscrossing freeway ramps, narrow surface streets, many unprotected left turns, blinding sunsets down its east-west roads, and a plethora of distracted drivers.

    Waymo is locked in a tight race with Cruise and other AV companies to get more robot cars on the street so it can start seeing a return on its enormous investment.


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