Waymo's Self-Driving Taxi Service Hits 100,000 Trips Per Week in the US
On August 21st, Tekedra Mawakana, the co-CEO of Waymo, claimed on Tuesday that the number of paid trips per week for its self-driving taxi service in the US has exceeded 100,000, doubling from the 50,000 reported in May.
Waymo spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that among the commercial service operating cities such as San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles, San Francisco currently provides the most travel services.
Last month, Alphabet announced that it will invest an additional $5 billion in Waymo. Waymo has been operating as an autonomous driving project under Alphabet since 2009.
On Monday, Waymo announced the details of its Generation 6 autonomous driving system, which will enable the company to provide services in a wider variety of weather conditions and reduce the number of expensive cameras and sensors on vehicles.
Waymo currently operates the only commercial self-driving taxi service in the US - WaymoOne, with approximately 700 vehicles. The company has previously cooperated with Uber in Phoenix to provide services to users of the ride-hailing application. Waymo mentioned in Tuesday's statement that in June this year, its service area in Phoenix increased by more than 230 square kilometers, making it the largest autonomous driving taxi service area in the US.
In addition, Waymo also expanded its services in San Francisco to three new areas of Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma in California, and tested self-driving vehicles on freeways in the San Francisco metropolitan area.
Although the media failed to independently verify Waymo's safety claim, the company said that among the cumulative mileage of more than 14,800,000 miles (about 23,820,000 kilometers) of driverless driving, the efficiency of WaymoDriver in avoiding accidents that cause personal injuries is 3.5 times that of human drivers; in avoiding accidents recorded by the police, its efficiency is 3 times that of human drivers.
Although Didi and Pony.ai have launched commercial self-driving taxi services in China, Waymo's competition in the US is relatively limited. For example, Cruise under General Motors has temporarily withdrawn its self-driving cars due to setbacks, and Uber and Ford have also suspended the development of self-driving taxi projects.
Tesla has been promising for years to enable customers' existing cars to have autonomous driving functions through software updates, but has not yet been able to launch a model suitable for use as a self-driving taxi. It is notable that Tesla plans to release its dedicated self-driving taxi CyberCab in a high-profile event on October 10, which has attracted great attention in the industry.