Waymo is adding four more cities to its growing list of robotaxi launches. The company announced Wednesday that it has begun testing its autonomous vehicles (with a safety monitor) in Philadelphia and will begin manual driving to collect data in Baltimore, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.
Waymo did not offer a timeline for when it plans to launch commercial services in those locations, nor do we know if the Alphabet-owned company will partner with other companies to operate robotaxis in each. That has been the measure in cities like Atlanta and Austin, for example, where Waymo has partnered with Uber to advance the launch of its robotaxi.
But the new locations join a list of more than 20 cities where the company is offering rides, preparing a commercial launch or conducting tests. Waymo now also offers freeway rides in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company plans to make one million trips per week by the end of 2026.
Waymo has done all this while claiming to be operating at a level five times safer than humans, according to dates the company recently launched.
But the expansion has not been without problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how the company’s vehicles operate near school buses, after a Waymo was filmed driving around a stopped bus in Atlanta in September.
This week, Austin news outlet KXAN published a report showing that Waymo vehicles have repeatedly driven past school buses that were in the process of unloading or loading children, even after Waymo claims to have sent software updates to fix the problem.
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