The California Public Utilities Commission has granted approval for Waymo to expand its commercial robotaxi service area. This decision allows the Alphabet-owned company to introduce its driverless ride-hailing vehicles to additional communities south of San Francisco.
According to a post by the company, this approval will not immediately alter its existing plans. Currently, Waymo operates a commercial robotaxi service throughout San Francisco and parts of the Peninsula. Driverless rides are also available to paying customers in several Silicon Valley cities, including sections of Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale. Overall, Waymo’s service area covers approximately 85 square miles across San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Waymo has expressed enthusiasm about the approval, which enables them to operate its fully autonomous commercial ride-hailing service in the South Bay and nearly all of San Jose. Although this development will not affect operations in the short term, the company is eager to expand its presence in the region.
The company is also working towards gaining access to San Francisco International Airport. Although these plans are on a longer timeline, Waymo has been granted a temporary permit to map roadways at the airport. While the vehicles will not operate autonomously there initially, employees will manually drive them for mapping purposes. This permit marks the beginning of a phased strategy towards potentially running commercial operations at the airport.
Waymo currently facilitates 250,000 paid trips weekly across its operations, which also include Los Angeles, Phoenix, and more recently, Austin.
