Waymo fleet of self -driving electric cars has been available for leasing in parts of Los Angeles for a few months so far. And in a After x This week, the company announced that it is scheduled to take most of the limits: highways. Initially, the only Waymo employees will be able to ride as SUVs are transported without a 10 or 405 driver and the company did not say when you expect the new terrain to push travelers.
After its launch in San Francisco and Vinix, Waymo started at the Los Angeles service in November. A spokesman for the company said that he attracted an initial waiting list of about 300,000 people before it became available to anyone who downloaded the service application. The expansion plans include Atlanta, Miami and Austin, according to the company’s website.
I have already paid waymo 1.9 million miles In Los Angeles. Its short history, perhaps inevitably, was not, without some bumps that sparked fears and pushed a series of national investigations into the traffic safety department on highways. Last month, for example, a customer posted a video of Waymo, which he was riding again and again Driving in circles He said that the deviation from the specified path. Wimo told the Times that the customer was delayed for five minutes and then transferred him to his destination.
How did Waymo reach Los Angeles?
Waymo works around it 100 taxis in Los AngelesWhich is currently limited to 79 square miles This extends from Santa Monica and Marina del Rey to West Hollywood and in the city of Los Angeles. Until the announcement this week, taxis were programmed to go to highways and highways inside the city.
The company started as the Google Motor Cars Project, which started in 2009 and put its first autonomous car on the road in 2015. The project was renamed in 2016 under the leadership of Google Alphabet and launched a service without a driver known as Waymo in 2020.
Before he came to Los Angeles, Waymo was launched in Phoenix and San Francisco, where the vehicles combined have provided tens of thousands of cyclists over 30 million miles without a human driver.
Waymo spent months in the Los Angeles vehicle test with humans in the driver’s seat before the launch of a fully independent service, available around the clock throughout the week through an application that works similar to the albeit and Lyft.
How safe is Waymo vehicles?
The declared goal for Waymo is to reduce traffic and mortality injuries through independent driving technology, which they describe on their website as a “more experienced driver in the world”. Although accidents that involve Waymo vehicles generate attention, vehicles are safer than human drivers, according to the data collected by Swiss Re.
Based on the data collected by Waymo, its cars without driver had 81 % less of the airbag spread, and less than 78 % of the incidents of establishing injuries and holidays less than 62 % of the police accidents reported from the traditional vehicles that drive the same Distance. Waymo vehicles depend on cameras, sensors and a type of laser radar called Lidar to work independently.
Despite her steel record, there have been many accidents and technological matches since Waymo One was released. The company recalled 444 vehicles last February after two simple collisions in the fast caliphate, and NHTSA opened an investigation in May to 31 accidents that raised safety concerns.
Waymo taxi He collided with a bicycle In San Francisco last year, another vehicle was crashed into a pole in Phoenix in May. Customers have reported many social media defects, including a Reddit user who posted a video of Waymo leading the wrong direction to Next traffic.
The company also faced audit on security concerns after the public members intervened in vehicles, caused their damages and tried to steal them. In October, two infantry stopped He stands on his way The customer demanded that their phone number be given.
Earlier this month, a man in the center of Los Angeles got the driver’s seat for the Waymo and tried to do so Driving Before you stop by the police.
What happens when something happens?
While the bikes can contact the human representative by clicking a button during their journey, some moved to social media to report that they are not satisfied with their ability to solve problems and serve customers.
Mike Jones, a man in Los Angeles, hung inside Wimo, said that the person who answered his assistance was unable to get his car immediately. Another customer In San Francisco, they said they had waited more than 45 minutes for help on the road after they were broken on their way and stopped their journey.
The company said that Waymo vehicles cannot be controlled by humans, but trained drivers can run a personal vehicle when necessary. The company also has the “Fleet Response” program that allows human agents to do so Contact directly With vehicles in difficult situations.
According to the company, if Waymo faces an unimaginable position, it will be programmed to contact an agent in response to the human fleet that will reside the surrounding Waymo and supply the car with the help of how to follow. In some cases, a person can set a distance road to avoid an obstacle.
Did the company achieve success?
The value of Waymo, which runs more than 150,000 paid trips every week, reached about 700 white SUVs in Jaguar I-Pace through its markets, more than $ 45 billion in November after the last financing round.
By placing self -driving vehicles on public roads, Waymo achieved unless Elon Musk and Tesla yet. Musk often Exaggerate Among the so -called full position of the self -esteem available in Teslas, which cannot work without a human driver. Musk unveiled a preliminary form for independent Cybercab in October, but it is not clear when the product will be launched.
Waymo once faced a competition from Cruise, a driver’s taxi company founded in 2013, but the company was actually closed last month when its owner, General Motors, said it would stop investing in its self -driving cars.
The demise of the journey was followed by a stabbing in San Francisco in 2023, where a A driver’s cruise vehicle without a driver He hit a woman and pulled her for several feet, causing critical injuries. The company suspended all the operations after the accident, but it started the test with a human driver present after several months in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas.