San Francisco: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has suggested that Waymo, the company’s autonomous vehicle unit, could one day offer its self-driving robotaxis for personal ownership.
While Pichai provided no timeline or concrete plans, his comments marked a rare acknowledgment that Waymo, currently the only US company offering fully autonomous, fare-charging robotaxi rides without a safety driver might someday offer its advanced vehicles to individual consumers.
Waymo, which originated as a modest Google research project in 2009 and became a standalone Alphabet subsidiary in 2016, has grown cautiously in a fiercely competitive and challenging market.
With more than 700 vehicles in its fleet, 300 of which currently operate in San Francisco- Waymo has taken a deliberate route through a field littered with setbacks, regulatory headwinds, and tech challenges that have grounded several rivals.
In contrast, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is charging full speed ahead. Musk has reiterated plans to launch a commercial robotaxi service as early as June, starting in Austin, Texas, a city with relatively light autonomous vehicle regulation.
Musk has also emphasized the cost advantage of Tesla’s approach, which relies solely on cameras and artificial intelligence foregoing lidar and other expensive sensors that are standard in Waymo’s vehicles.
“Teslas probably cost a quarter, 20 percent of what a Waymo costs and [are] made in very high volume,” Musk said following Tesla’s earnings announcement earlier this week.
Waymo emphasizes safety and redundancy, using a fusion of high-definition cameras, lidar, radar, and advanced mapping systems to explore roads. This multi-layered approach is aimed at creating safer driving outcomes in unpredictable urban environments- including inclement weather, complex intersections, and heavy pedestrian traffic which continue to challenge autonomy systems.
Despite only accounting for a small portion of Alphabet’s overall valuation, Waymo has logged impressive operational data. The company reports more than 250,000 fully autonomous, paid rides each week across its active markets: San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin, with plans to expand soon to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C.
Rather than manufacturing vehicles itself, Waymo continues to expand through strategic partnerships.
The company collaborates with ride-hailing platform Uber, fleet operator Moove, and major automakers including Hyundai, Jaguar, and Zeekr.
