Waymo driverless vehicles heading to Tokyo
Waymo has announced that it will begin driving its vehicles on Tokyo’s streets, making this the company’s first international location. Waymo announced the expansion in December, which is happening in partnership with Japanese taxi service Nihon Kotsu and taxi app Go. Now, the US-based company is finally ready to hit the road abroad. Waymo says trained […]
Driverless Ubers launched in Austin, Texas
Driverless Uber rides have been launched in Austin, Texas, with riders having the option to accept a Waymo autonomous vehicle on the app. The collaboration with Waymo’s technology and Uber’s platform provides users with a fully autonomous all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicle. Riders who request an UberX, Uber Green, Comfort, or Comfort Electric could be matched with a Waymo […]
San Francisco: Waymo vehicle caught up in fatal collision
A deadly, multi-car collision in San Francisco on Sunday evening has marked the first time in the US that a truly autonomous vehicle, with no one in the driver’s seat, has been involved in a fatal collision, according to federal transportation records. The Waymo vehicle involced in the incident was entirely blameless, however. The self-driving Waymo car […]
Man trapped in driverless vehicle going around in circles in a car park
A man’s been trapped in a self-driving Waymo taxi in the US, as it went in circles and leading to him raising concerns about the technology. Mike Johns, a tech enthusiast and supporter of autonomous vehicles, experienced the bizarre situation in Scottsdale, Arizona when the Waymo he was in began spinning repeatedly in a car […]
Women passengers in driverless cars face harassment
There are reports women passengers of driverless cars in San Francisco are being harassed by male pedestrians who have been chasing the cars, with a lack of a physical driver leading to safety fears. The Washington Post spoke with four such passengers, three of them women, who were left rattled by their experiences. In one, […]
Waymo compiles pedestrian and cyclist injuries dataset
Google’s driverless car division Waymo has published a new study examining hundreds of types of crashes involving vulnerable road users, which it is calling “the largest dataset of its kind in the US.” Roughly 40,000 people in the US are killed each year in vehicle crashes. But according to a story on the website The Verge, while automakers […]
Waymo gets $5.6bn further investment
Google’s driverless car sister company Waymo has closed its latest investment round, raising $5.6 billion (£4.3 billion), led by its parent company Alphabet, with continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price. It says that, with this latest investment, it will continue to welcome more riders into […]
Waymo publishes data suggesting its robotaxis are almost four times safer than humans
According to its new safety data hub, Waymo robotaxis have now completed around 22 million miles of autonomous driving rides. In Phoenix and San Francisco, where 21 million of those miles were driven autonomously, injury-reported-crash rates are almost four times lower than with human drivers. Waymo is the first robotaxi service that offers transparent data […]
Better than humans? New website to show Waymo AVs are “world’s most trusted” drivers
Waymo has launched a new website that highlights the safety record of its fleet of 600 autonomous vehicles in California and Arizona. The “road safety data hub” details Waymo’s history of collisions over the past four years and the number of driverless miles traveled across its current three markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, says NBC […]
Latest Waymo robotaxi to have fewer sensors to save costs
Waymo has previewed its new sixth-generation robotaxi, an electric minivan manufactured by the Chinese automaker Zeekr. In a blog post, Waymo VP of engineering Satish Jeyachandran touts the new robotaxi as more high tech than past iterations, while also featuring fewer sensors to help reduce costs for the Alphabet-owned company, says The Verge. And within […]