Despite a decade of predictions that they were just around the corner, autonomous vehicles that can carry passengers on public roads, no human driver required, have mostly been confined to drawing-board dreams and venture capital–supported pilot programs. The oft-repeated joke is that driverless cars are five years away and they always will be.
But in 2024, driverless taxi company Waymo (owned by Google parent company Alphabet) started expanding its limited commercial operations into something that looks a lot like a full-fledged driverless taxi service in multiple cities. The company performs 100,000 rides a week.
Safety is obviously the major concern holding back driverless car operations, particularly after an autonomous Uber-operated car with a human test driver in it fatally struck a pedestrian in 2018. But reporter Timothy Lee found that most accidents involving Waymo cars were caused by the errors of human drivers in other vehicles, and that the company’s autonomous cars get into crashes at about a third of the rate of human drivers.
Here’s a list of places where dreams of driverless cars are quickly becoming reality.
San Francisco, California
Dense, hilly San Francisco, with its narrow, chaotic streets, is a challenging environment for driverless cars. Yet in 2023, Waymo started offering rides to select passengers who had put their names on the company’s waitlist. In June 2024, the company started offering rides to the general public across all of San Francisco and a few other neighboring communities on the peninsula.
Los Angeles, California
In April 2024, Waymo began offering rides to customers in Los Angeles. By August, it had expanded its service area to cover 79 square miles of metro area. The company’s robotaxis can now take you all the way from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles.
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix’s wide, low-traffic suburban streets and sunny, stable weather made it an ideal testing ground for driverless cars. Waymo has been offering rides to customers there since 2020.
In 2024, it passed some crucial milestones. The company expanded its services across the metro area. Waymo cars can now pick up and drop off customers across a 315-square-mile area. Come January, Waymo has announced it will begin testing on Phoenix highways. That will dramatically cut travel times for cross-city trips.
NEXT UP: Austin, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia
Waymo announced in September that it would be partnering with Uber to offer rides in the Texas and Georgia capitals. By early 2025, the company says riders who request an UberX, Uber Green, Uber Comfort, or Uber Comfort Electric ride could be matched with a Waymo for qualifying trips.
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