Waymo starts autonomous testing in Philadelphia

Waymo is adding different 4 cities to its increasing database of robotaxi rollouts. The institution announced Wednesday it has begun investigating its autonomous vehicles (with a information monitor) successful Philadelphia, and that it volition commencement manual driving to cod information successful Baltimore, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh.

Waymo did not connection a timeline for erstwhile it plans to motorboat commercialized services successful those locations, nor bash we cognize whether the Alphabet-owned institution volition spouse with different companies to run robotaxis successful each one. That has been the determination successful cities similar Atlanta and Austin, for example, wherever Waymo has partnered with Uber to beforehand its robotaxi rollout.

But the caller locations articulation a database of implicit 20 cities wherever the institution is either offering rides, prepping a commercialized launch, oregon testing. Waymo is besides present offering rides connected freeways successful Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The institution plans to beryllium doing 1 cardinal rides per week by the extremity of 2026.

Waymo has done each this portion claiming to beryllium operating astatine a level 5 times safer than humans, according to data the institution precocious released.

But the enlargement has not travel without its issues. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating however the company’s vehicles run adjacent schoolhouse buses, aft a Waymo was filmed driving astir a stopped autobus successful Atlanta successful September.

This week, Austin quality outlet KXAN published a report showing Waymo’s vehicles person driven past schoolhouse buses that were successful the process of unloading oregon loading children aggregate times — including aft Waymo claims to person shipped bundle updates to code the problem.