Waymo Driverless Taxis - Updates and Discussion

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I took a CRAZY Robotaxi (Waymo Oct 2024)​

 
Waymo in LA
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Waymo autonomous driving taxi ride experience in Downtown Austin, TX​

 
Waymo to Test Driverless Vehicles in New Orleans During Mardi Gras

Waymo
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NEW ORLEANS – Waymo, the self-driving car division of Alphabet Inc., will launch a pilot program in New Orleans during Mardi Gras starting on Feb. 17 running for approximately three weeks.

The goal of the pilot is to train Waymo’s driverless system to handle difficult road conditions and the timing of the trial to coincide with Mardi Gras is deliberate. New Orleans is already challenging, but Mardi Gras will set the bar even higher. The narrow New Orleans streets, huge crowds, and road closures will be the perfect testing ground for refining Waymo’s algorithms and operational protocols.

Waymo will use five or six electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles during the test, each using lidar, a detection system that uses laser light, radar, which uses radio waves, and cameras to maneuver quickly and appropriately.

Human drivers will also be in the vehicles during the test to serve as a safety backup while the vehicle’s autonomous systems collect data and adjust to New Orleans’ unique challenges. The tests will cover the CBD, French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, Bywater, and the Lower Garden District.

Waymo is already providing driverless services in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. It was initially launched in San Francisco and Phoenix and when it started serving Los Angeles in Nov. 2024, there was a waiting list of around 300,000 people. Now it is available to anyone who downloads the app.

The fact that Waymo is already in operation in three major cities in the US means the vehicles being tested in New Orleans have millions of miles of data embedded into their autonomous driving algorithms. The plan is to extend testing to ten additional cities this year including Las Vegas and San Diego, with more cities added later in the year. Waymo will not be offering driver-less services to the public in New Orleans until testing and refining is fully completed.

Once Waymo does become available in New Orleans, it could have an enormous impact on the way people commute. Proponents cite the potential for reducing human error and even cutting traffic congestion, but the jury is still out on whether Waymo’s cars can handle New Orleans roads and unpredictable traffic.

New Orleans is one example of how self-driving car companies are testing their technology to prove that they can handle difficult conditions. If the test goes well, New Orleans might see self-driving taxis in the near future. It would also be quite an accomplishment for Waymo.

The announcement of the Waymo trial was made by Louisiana Economic Development (LED) at a pre-Super Bowl event at the Louisiana NOW Pavilion and is part of Louisiana’s broader push to position Louisiana as a premier destination for business and economic development.
 
www.theverge.com

Waymo to test in 10 new cities in 2025, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego

Waymo is trying to shorten the length of time it takes to launch robotaxi operations.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
Waymo to test in 10 new cities in 2025, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego

Waymo is sending autonomous vehicles to 10 new cities in 2025, starting with Las Vegas and San Diego, the company shared exclusively with The Verge.

The vehicles will be manually driven, and the testing operations are not necessarily a precursor to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service. (They’re also not precluded from launching a service, either.) Rather, the Alphabet-owned company views these “road trips” as an opportunity to see how well its self-driving system adapts to new locales with varying weather conditions and regional driving habits.

“So what we’re looking for is places that are going to challenge our system and look very, very different,” said Nick Rose, product manager for Waymo’s expansion efforts. “Las Vegas is pretty interesting because, I mean, if you’ve ever been to Vegas, it’s pretty unique among a lot of US cities.”

Las Vegas is known for its dense traffic and chaotic drop-off zones outside of hotels and popular casinos along the Strip. The streets also have what’s known as Botts’ dots, instead of painted lane lines, and the street layout is often derided as an absolute mess. Several autonomous vehicle operators have already set up shop there, including Amazon’s Zoox, which plans on launching a public rideshare service later this year.
San Diego, in comparison, is similar to the cities where Waymo already operates, Rose said. “What we wanna validate is that the system performs well in San Diego without having a ton of prior driving information there,” he added.

Waymo has said it plans on launching robotaxi operations in Austin, Atlanta, and Miami in the near future. Last year, Waymo sent vehicles to a variety of locations, including Truckee, California, upstate New York, and Michigan, in search of winter weather conditions in which to stress test its robot cars.

This year, the theme is “generalizability”: how well the vehicles adapt to new cities after having driven tens of millions of miles in its core markets of San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Ideally, the company is trying to get to a point where it can bring its vehicles to a new city and launch a robotaxi with a minimal amount of testing as a preamble.

“When we go to a brand new city in the US, there are things that are subtly different,” Rose said. “And we want to see how well the driver performs on those things out of the box without having to retrain or make adjustments.”

One example is the way Waymo’s vehicles perceive emergency vehicles. Fire trucks in San Francisco look subtly different from fire trucks in Austin or Los Angeles, Rose said. These trips are an opportunity to update the perception system to account for these subtle differences in emergency vehicles as well as other local quirks. (Waymo vehicles have occasionally blocked intersections or impeded emergency vehicles, but the company recently passed an independent assessment that found it was adept at detecting and responding to emergency situations.)

Waymo plans on sending less than 10 vehicles to each city, where they will be manually driven around for a period of a couple months. The vehicles will stick to busy commercial districts, as these are the areas where Waymo robotaxis are most likely to operate.

Waymo is reaching out in advance to officials in each of the cities in which it plans to test vehicles, Rose said. He wouldn’t disclose the names of the additional cities or how many miles Waymo will try to rack up in each. But he said that it would be enough to make these trips useful.

“The general theme is to collect enough experience to where we can get a pretty statistically significant sense of how well we’re generalizing, especially these perception things,” he said.
 
I wonder when the driverless cars will stop resembling human-driven cars.
 
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Waymo ride - March 26, 2025 - Austin, Texas​

 
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James May reviews a fully driverless car​

 
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The road toward more driverless cars​

 
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My honest review of Waymo’s driverless car! (I was shocked)​

 
I see a Waymo review in my future...

caughtindot.com

Waymo Begins Mapping Boston Streets for Potential Robotaxi Expansion - Caught In Dot

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company under Alphabet Inc., has initiated mapping operations in Boston, signaling a potential expansion of its self-driving taxi service into the city. Currently, Waymo has deployed a [...]
caughtindot.com caughtindot.com

Waymo Begins Mapping Boston Streets for Potential Robotaxi Expansion​


Lidar.png
 
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First driverless ride in Atlanta. Waymo / Uber full review.​

 
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