Waymo ‘laser-focusing’ on expanding Waymo One ride-hailing service

Abner Li | Jul 26 2023 - 1:41 pm PT

Waymo is focusing its “efforts and investment on ride-hailing” with Waymo One being the business priority going forward.

The Alphabet company today cited the “tremendous momentum and substantial commercial opportunity [it’s] seeing on the ride-hailing front.” In Phoenix, Waymo One offers paid trips, while late-stage testing in San Francisco continues. Testing is underway in Los Angeles ahead of offering autonomous rides to the first testers. Waymo says there is “significant business growth and rider demand” in those three cities and previously announced a partnership where its robotaxis will eventually appear in the Uber app.

Our goal is to set our company on a solid path of value creation by focusing on achieving commercial success for our ride-hailing business in the near term.

This sole Waymo One focus will see the company “push back the timeline on our commercial and operational efforts on trucking.” These autonomous trucks would have delivered cargo, with Waymo still seeing a “significant future commercial opportunity for our trucking solution alongside other commercial applications.”

It will continue to collaborate on an existing partnership with Daimler Truck North America (DTNA), noting how self-driving advances made in the ride-hailing business will translate to other areas:

Both our companies share the common goal of improving road safety and efficiency for fleet customers, so we’ll follow through with the platform investments we’ve made to create a redundant chassis to facilitate autonomous trucking. We look forward to continuing to bring together our autonomous tech with DTNA’s autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia® platform and exploring the potential of future platforms. Our ongoing investment in advancing Waymo Driver capabilities, especially on freeway, will directly translate to trucking and benefit its development efforts.

Besides ride-hailing and trucking, the “Waymo Driver” platform is suited for local delivery and personal car ownership where the autonomous technology is fitted on to vehicles that regular people can buy.

Laser-focusing on ride-hailing today puts us, our partners, and our customers in a strong position to be successful in the future across all of the business lines we pursue over time, showcasing the breadth of the Waymo Driver.