Waymo announced that Washington, DC will be its next robotaxi city. The company aims to launch its Waymo One ridehailing service in the nation’s capitol in 2026 — though it acknowledged that it will first need to change the city law prohibiting fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers.
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Currently, companies that want to test autonomous vehicles in DC are required to have a human driver behind the steering wheel in case something goes wrong. Tech advocates have been pressing the city council to loosen the restrictions to allow fully autonomous vehicles on public roads. A spokesperson for the DC transportation department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Alphabet-owned company’s manually driven vehicles have been spotted around DC since last year. A Waymo product manager told a local news outlet that the company was primarily focused on neighborhoods like Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, and Penn Quarter. Waymo has not commented on the size of its service area nor which neighborhoods it is targeting if it launches next year.
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