Waymo, the self-driving car and robotaxi subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc. and competitor to GM Cruise, just closed an additional $5.6 billion in investment for its robotaxi operations, which it has earmarked to fund expansion of existing service.
According to Reuters, half a dozen firms that have already provided financial backing to Waymo contributed to the current multibillion dollar influx of money to the company.
Waymo said in a statement that it will use the investment to “continue to welcome more riders into our Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles,” all part of its California operations. Texas robotaxi services will also receive some of the funding, with operations carried out “in Austin and Atlanta through our expanded partnership with Uber,” the statement continued.
Reuters pointed out that Tesla is looking to get into the driverless taxi sector in 2025, with planned service launches of the Cybercab in the same states – California and Texas – where Waymo is operating. Zoox, owned and operated by Amazon, appears to be still in the testing phase, with its vehicles not yet offering rides to the public.
In early spring 2024, California gave the green light to Waymo to continue expanding its operations in major Golden State cities. It started offering city-wide service in San Francisco during June, while highlighting the superior safety of autonomous vehicles. Recently, it announced the addition of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric crossover to its fleet.
Meanwhile, GM’s Cruise has resumed testing of its AVs in the Bay Area. The subsidiary is to pay $1.5 million after the traffic accident that led to a lengthy suspension of operations in the U.S. Robotaxi services have a tendency to turn skeptics into converts by providing a pleasant, enjoyable experience, according to recent research. Cruise is working on strongly improving safety after replacing large numbers of employees and its leadership.
This summer, Cruise said it wants to begin fully autonomous robotaxi operations again, instead of the current supervised rides with a human safety driver present, by 2024’s end and to begin charging fares in the first few months of 2025.
Comments
$BILLIONS to save Labor cost of human Cabbies and add more people to the Unemployement Stats.
In DC it all makes perfect sense .
Bro we are never going to see this autonomous self driving fantasy world in our lifetime. PERIOD. In order to safely implement this they need to remove the human element entirely which not only means making every car on the road self driving but also make it so pedestrians and bicyclists can’t just get on the road and interfere with the AIs. Because AIs can’t think outside the box and account for human unpredictability and no amount of machine learning is going to address that. So in order to implement this in a manner that will truly be safe, the network of roads has to allow for the cars to essentially “talk” to each other with no interference from outside unpredictability. A random person crossing the street abruptly will interfere with that system. Its the reason they have to fully shut down train lines in systems that use fully autonomous trains (CBTC driven trains) when workers need to access the tracks.
So like I said before. Imagine those folks in DC and local jurisdiction spending the billions for the infrastructure upgrades. Because I don’t. My own town won’t pay to complete the lines on the road in my neighborhood let alone potholes so why would I expect them to spend billions in upgrading for a system like this?
I think too many people are living in a fantasy world filled with unicorns and self-driving cars that forget engineering and technology has their limits. And what gets me more angry is this denial of realization and the money is being dumped into this pipedream nonsense rather than making further investments in improving EV tech. For all this talk about moving away from fossil fuels they seem more concerned in this fantasy world rather than focusing on what is attainable now.