Waymo Expands Robotaxi Service

 “Waymo LLC is opening its driver-supported robotaxis in San Francisco to selected riders, an important test for the Google sister company's technology and business in a major city.
The Alphabet Inc. unit, which has raised billions of dollars from outside investors and recently completed a leadership shake-up, has been building toward a San Francisco launch for more than a decade. Finding success in ferrying ride-hail passengers around the city in autonomous vehicles could provide a cornerstone for a revenue-generating business for Waymo, which has racked up losses for years.
On Tuesday, the company said San Francisco residents can sign up to participate in the test program by downloading the Waymo One app. It declined to share how many riders would be enrolled or how many cars would be eligible for the service. The rides will be free for participants, who must sign nondisclosure agreements and can't bring guests on rides.
Riders selected by Waymo will be able use its app to hail a Jaguar I-Pace vehicle equipped with the company's latest autonomous technology. Drivers seated behind the wheel will assume control if the computer falters or fails to adapt to any number of unpredictable scenarios as it navigates narrow, congested streets alongside pedestrians and cyclists.
San Francisco is a critical market in the race to autonomy because it boasts one of the highest concentrations of Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. drivers in the U.S. Waymo is one of eight companies as of May that have received permits from the state of California to test autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel. Of those companies, Waymo executives consider General Motors Co.'s autonomous business, Cruise, as the foremost competitor in the race to a driverless ride-hailing service.
Waymo's business plan calls for it to build a robotaxi fleet that could operate in about half of the 10 largest ride-hailing cities in the world, according to former executives.

Once Waymo reduces the expense of its long-range cameras, laser technology and other hardware, which analysts estimate exceeds $200,000 a vehicle, its executives are betting the company can generate enough from rider fees to maintain and grow a fleet.


A Waymo spokeswoman declined to comment on the company's business plan.
Enthusiasm has waned for autonomous vehicles in recent years as companies confront rising costs, government red tape and artificial-intelligence limitations. In late 2016, Lyft President John Zimmer predicted that self-driving cars would handle a majority of rides by 2021.
Industry leaders have since sought to temper expectations, saying full autonomy could take another decade or more.
Waymo's initiative mirrors the approach it took in Chandler, Ariz., located outside Phoenix, where it began offering rides in minivans with its autonomous-vehicle technology in 2017. After traveling more than 65,000 miles without a human behind the steering wheel, it last year opened the ride-hailing service to the public and removed backup drivers from the cars cruising broad, suburban streets.
The complexities of San Francisco are far greater than those of an Arizona suburb.
This past June, one of the company's Jaguars collided with a pedestrian on a scooter in San Francisco. The company said one of its trained drivers disengaged the autonomous system and was driving the car manually at the time of the accident. No serious injuries were reported.
In putting local riders in cars, Waymo risks exposing itself to documentation and criticism on social media. In Arizona, one rider built a YouTube channel documenting the rides he hailed with Waymo, including an episode where he was stranded in the car after it stopped because a series of orange cones were blocking the lane it intended to enter.
Similar mishaps in San Francisco would increase public attention on Waymo's co-CEOs, Dmitri Dolgov and Tekedra Mawakana, who succeeded John Krafcik in the role earlier this year.
In June, Waymo raised $2.5 billion in funding from investors, including the private-equity firm Silver Lake, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Abu Dhabi's sovereign-wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co. The funding built on the $3.25 billion it previously raised.
Before departing the company, Mr. Krafcik billed the $2.5 billion fundraising effort internally as the penultimate round before an initial public offering, the former executives said. Getting its San Francisco ride-hailing service to the same point as Chandler, a process that took three years, would be a sign that the company is close to going public, one of the executives said.” [1]

Bad news for us, Lithuanian drivers. You need to look for another work activity.

1.Waymo Expands Robotaxi Service. Mickle, Tripp.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 25 Aug 2021: B.1