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Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous driving subsidiary, has been granted a permit by the California Public Utilities Commission to participate in the state's Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Passenger Service pilot, according to Business Insider.
This means Waymo can now transport passengers using its self-driving vehicles within the state. More specifically, the permit gives Waymo employees the "ability to hail our vehicles and bring guests on rides within our South Bay territory," according to a statement from a company spokesperson cited by TechCrunch.
The permit does come with some restrictions though, including not being able to charge for rides and requiring a safety driver be present in the car.
What this means for Waymo: The California testing permit puts the company in a stronger position to expand on its early lead in the AV space.
- Last year, Waymo became the first firm to operate a proprietary autonomous ride-hailing service, called Waymo One, in the US. Waymo One launched for select participants of Waymo's early rider program in the Phoenix area - beginning in Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert - at the end of last year and now counts more than 1,000 users. For context, the early rider program was introduced in April 2017 to give a vetted group of people the opportunity to summon one of Waymo's self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans. A portion of these participants migrated over to Waymo One, where they received 24/7 access to the autonomous service, but also began to be charged for the rides.
In May, Waymo revealed that it was partnering with Lyft in Arizona to give more consumers access to self-driving rides. Ten Waymo AVs were recently made available through the Lyft app. This enables Waymo to get its tech in front of moreriders, especially those who may be wary of it. It also gives Waymo access to more rider-experience data and opens up potential revenue sharing opportunities with ride-hailing firms. Waymo's AV ride-hailing service could reach scale faster if it can expand its partnership with Lyft into more geographies, or even if it uses Lyft as a proof of concept to partner with more established ride-hailing firms.
Waymo's latest expansion efforts - including the permit that could help the company expand its commercial service to California - are further highlighted against the backdrop of GM's Cruise struggles. Self-driving vehicle venture Cruise appears to be faltering: A recent report by The Information cited by Business Insider stated that Cruise was still experiencing significant technical issues, including unpredictable braking and steering, and taking 80% longer than a human driver to complete a trip.
In fact, Cruise has fallen significantly behind on its early ambitions of debuting an autonomous ride-hailing service by 2018, later pushed to 2019. Several months ago, Cruise's tech was reportedly getting in a collision every 450 miles, still far from the goal of having a collision once in every 1,000 miles by the end of 2018.
As Cruise is considered Waymo's closest rival in the US in terms of technical expertise, this bodes well for the Alphabet-backed company. It should continue to capitalize on its lead.
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