In recent year , Waymo has been abut toward its long - hold goal of overturn urban transportation by deploying a fully self-governing , scalable , and sustainable ride - hailing avail .
The Alphabet - owned troupe has just taken another footprint in that commission with the opening of a Modern vehicle factory in Metro Phoenix , Arizona , in partnership with car maker Magna .
The new 239,000 - satisfying - foot site will work up thousands of Jaguar I - PACEs equipped with Waymo ’s amply self-reliant engineering , Waymo saidin a spot on its website on Monday .
The party said that it now has more than 1,500 autonomous vehicles operate across San Francisco , Los Angeles , Phoenix , and Austin , providing more than 250,000 paid head trip to drug user . Waymo also has plan to launch its service in Atlanta , Miami , and Washington , D.C. next class .
Those new cities will probably get many of the more than 2,000 in full autonomous I - PACE vehicle that arrive off the production argument in 2026 .
“ We ’re gallant to bestow this technology — once remember to be the clobber of science fable — to more and more riders across this area , ” Waymo said .
Alphabet knob Sundar Pichai latterly paint a picture that it was considering offering its autonomous vehicle for personal ownership , and alsodiscussing the theme with Toyota , though with regulative hurdles still high for to the full driverless vehicles , such a scenario is probable to be a ways off .
Waymo seems to be perform well in what is a highly competitive sector . A figure of rivals — General Motors - owned Cruise and Ford / VW - endorse Argo AI among them — have found the endeavor of build up out the technology and related services a challenge too far , squeeze their closedown in 2024 and 2022 , severally .
But it has n’t all been smooth seafaring for Waymo , either , withvarious technology - relate incidentson public route instigate increase scrutiny from regulators .
While many studies have paint a picture that Waymo ’s autonomous vehicle are dependable than human drivers , recent researchby Professor Missy Cummings , director of George Mason University ’s Autonomy and Robotics Center , found that while Waymo performs better than human rideshare drivers , its crash rate — about 1,000 per 100 million miles — is still worse than the average human driver .
However , Cummings emphasized that equate autonomous - fomite safe to human driver is scientifically problematical because man conjointly drive gazillion of mile annually , while driverless cars have only logged ten of millions , making current comparability statistically invalid .
self-governing - car technology has made astonishing improvements in recent years , but its special power to treat all types of traffic scenarios and weather condition intend it will likely be some time before regulators yield company like Waymo broader operational freedoms .
