On Wednesday, Waymo, the self-driving vehicle firm owned by Alphabet, revealed that it will be launching its ride-hailing services in Austin, Texas. Austin will therefore be the fourth major city, after Metro Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, to welcome Waymo's autonomous ride-hailing program. As noted in their blog post, the ‘initial phase of operations’ is scheduled to start in the fall, featuring vehicles that operate solely under fully autonomous conditions. However, the public will only have access to the service a few months later.
Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company owned by Alphabet, has announced that Austin, Texas is the latest city to join its ride-hailing services. This makes Austin the fourth major city to join Waymo's pilot program, following Metro Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The program is scheduled to begin this fall, but rides to the public will not be available until a few months later when Waymo initiates their 'fully autonomous deployment.' Early tests were conducted in Austin as far back as March of this year.Chris Bonelli, the product communications manager at Waymo, told CNBC that the market entry playbook will start in the fall and proceed in phases. The service will be available all day in areas such as downtown Austin, Barton Hills, East Austin, Hyde Park, Riverside and more. This expansion into Austin comes as the city's economy has shown rapid growth, and the metropolitan area contains nearly 2.5 million people. The exact number of vehicles for the Austin fleet was not revealed.Since becoming its own entity in 2016, Waymo has raised at least $5.5 billion in funding. The latest round, which totaled $2.5 billion from investors such as Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz in 2021, will be used to advance the company's technology and expand its team.The challenge of robotaxi adoption has been a battle for many in the self-driving industry due to consumer safety concerns, city regulations, and the need for human safety drivers. Despite the release of Waymo One, their fully driverless service, in 2018, it is one of only two such services providing commercial operations in the U.S. This is due to the difficulty of finding cities with favorable leadership and regulations, as well as ideal road infrastructure, climate, and population.Waymo announced in July that they would pause their semi-truck development and focus on autonomous ride-hailing services, resulting in an undisclosed number of layoffs.
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