Waymo’s service in Phoenix doesn’t include the freeways. That’s a problem there as once you start doing the longer trips this new service area allows it can double the trip time to avoid the freeway. A trip from southern Chandler to western Phoenix can take over an hour on surface streets. While there are many attractions to a robotaxi ride, such as privacy and quality, they don’t compensate for doubling the trip time.
Good news is that Waymo is driving employees on freeways with a safety driver on board.
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There is a similar issue at the airport. Waymo only serves the SkyTrain stations, though they have added a new station on the west side. No matter how fast and frequent the SkyTrain is, people will prefer cars that take them directly to their terminal.
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In San Francisco, Waymo still awaits permission from the California PUC to charge money for rides. It doesn’t need the money but it does want to learn from how riders interact with a service they are paying for. Some areas of San Francisco are only available to Waymo’s “Trusted Tester” beta riders. Those riders are not under NDA but are limited in number.
[...] we’re doubling our Waymo One service area and connecting our downtown and East Valley territories. This expansion will include Scottsdale for the first time, cover nearly all of Tempe and give additional access to Chandler and Mesa [...]
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In San Francisco, we’ll continue onboarding new Waymo One riders and are giving our Trusted Testers access to more of the city, including Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach.
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Across Waymo One, we are now serving over 10 thousand trips per week to public riders, not including employees. With this latest expansion, we intend for those numbers to accelerate rapidly to 10 times that scale by next summer.
Brad Templeton explains some limitations:
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From the blog post:
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