Waymo co CEO Dmitri dolkov announced on Wednesday on the "techcrunch sessions: mobility" stage that waymo is withdrawing human safety drivers from its recently expanded robot taxi business in the center of Phoenix City. "We will start a fully autonomous, passenger only operation in Central Phoenix , which will... Use our fifth generation system on Jaguar i-paces," dolkov said
The news came less than two months after alphabet's autonomous driving Department announced that it would expand its robot taxi service from the East Valley of Phoenix to the city center. At that time, waymo also said that it had opened driverless car service for employees in San Francisco.
Employees were also the first to receive automated driving services with human safety operators in Phoenix City Center, but last week waymo opened the practice to its "trusted testers". Driverless cars in the area are temporarily open only to employees, but waymo said it would open the project to the public in the coming weeks.
Waymo has been testing in Phoenix since 2016 and will start providing fully autonomous public transport services there in 2020. This landmark event deepened the company's foundation in the city. At present, it dominates the robot taxi market.
According to a waymo spokesman, the driverless business in Phoenix City Center will start in the northeast of the region and gradually expand to all credible test areas in waymo, which cover the central part of Phoenix, including the city center, central city and South Central.
In addition to opening the pilotless pilot in Phoenix City Center, waymo said it began testing at Phoenix Tiangang International Airport with independent experts present. Waymo's Jaguar i-pace fleet will drive autonomously at the airport 24 hours a day, concentrating its business around the 44th Street PHX skyline train station, which, according to waymo, is close to the pick-up and drop off points for other bus services.
Similarly, waymo employees will become the original "white mouse" and call a car between Phoenix City Center and Sky Harbor, and then the company will open the service to the public.
"What we learned at Tiangang airport will benefit us elsewhere and help accelerate our progress," waymo wrote in a blog post. "As we bring waymo driver to more people in more places, we will be able to deploy faster in each new area and focus on some inherent challenges unique to each place, such as driving in the snow of New York City, in the fashion district of Los Angeles, or the notorious Pittsburgh."
Although waymo would not share the size of its fleet operating in Phoenix City Center or airport, the company does say it has more than 300 cars in the city.
In terms of further expansion, although waymo was reluctant to share many details, dolgov did hint at plans to launch services in a third city. Dolkov said that in addition to Phoenix and San Francisco, waymo has been tested in cities and states such as Seattle, Michigan and New York.
Dolkov pointed out that waymo will follow the rules of the game, that is, the company will determine a market of interest according to the ability of its fifth generation waymo driver, test it there for a few months, and then, as we can see, prepare to withdraw from the security operator.
"We have been investing and making a qualitative leap in technology to the fifth generation system, which can be designed to work anywhere," dolgov said. "Now we are exercising the power of deployment, but we are doing it on the new system, and we are much faster than before. You see this in San Francisco. You will see this in Phoenix City Center, and we will exercise this set of rules of the game as we explore new markets."
With the development of waymo, dolkov pointed out that the company focuses on expanding its latest generation waymo driver to more Jaguar vehicles, but does not include Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which are driven by waymo's fourth generation driver and operate in the East Valley of Phoenix, where the company operates its public and fully autonomous services.
The fifth generation driver is the same as the system currently used by waymo on class 8 trucks and is used to pilot independent freight business.
Waymo is also working with Geely's high-end electric vehicle brand zeekr to build a customized autonomous vehicle. Dolkov did not provide any timetable in this regard, but he did say that waymo's future path will be to cooperate with partner OEMs to establish a suitable platform for its driver.