Waymo is a California-based autonomous driving technology development company. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Google began its development of autonomous vehicle technology in 2009 at its X lab, which at the time was run by co-founder Sergey Brin.
The project was launched by Sebastian Thrun, the former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and Anthony Levandowski. In December 2016, the unit was renamed Waymo and spun-off into a new division in Alphabet.
Waymo now operates a commercial self-driving taxi service in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area. In October 2020, it expanded the service to the public. At the time, it was the only self-driving commercial service that operates without safety backup drivers in the vehicle.
Waymo also is developing its technology for use in other vehicles, including delivery vans and Class 8 tractor-trailers for delivery and logistics.
Recent News Items
Waymo will be offering free rides to residents and visitors across different LA neighborhoods ahead of a wider service launch.
The vote allows Cruise and Waymo to charge for all rides, expand hourly operations and service area, and add as many robotaxis to their fleets as they want.
This makes Austin Waymo’s fourth major ride-hail city, joining Metro Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Waymo still plans to continue to collaborate with DTNA to advance the technical development of an autonomous trucking platform.
The companies announced a multi-year strategic partnership that will make the Waymo Driver available on the Uber Platform.
Waymo announced that it has doubled its robotaxi service area in Phoenix and is growing its service area in San Francisco.
Waymo announced its starting completely driverless testing in Los Angeles, making it the third city to see driverless Waymo vehicles.
Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet, recently gave some insight into how it trains its Waymo Driver to avoid collisions on the road.
Waymo announced that it is expanding its service area in both San Francisco and Phoenix.
Waymo announced that it will soon begin giving autonomous robotaxi rides, with no automation specialists in the vehicles, in San Francisco.