You’ll soon see driverless Waymo cars on freeways

The Waymo One ride-hailing service today operates on surface streets and will soon be able to use freeways. 

In Phoenix, Waymo will “begin testing its fully autonomous passenger cars without a human driver on freeways” for a “significantly” faster experience. 

For example, a trip from Sky Harbor Airport to the northern parts of Scottsdale takes 25 minutes, instead of 50, when utilizing the AZ-101 compared to just surface streets.

Waymo says it is “laser focused on our freeway ride hailing testing.” This is “especially important” for bringing Waymo One to other cities. In Los Angeles, for example, they are vital for getting from one part of town to another in a reasonable amount of time.

Previous freeway testing has included a human “specialist” in the driver seat to take back control of the car or class 8 truck, which the company deprioritized in favor of its consumer Lyft/Uber competitor last year.

Over the past year, Waymo has “incrementally ramped up our testing on freeways with passenger vehicles.” It touts the ability to “navigate everyday scenarios autonomously and inform our approach to responding to rare events safely.”

We continuously iterate and improve our technology and operations through a rigorous process that combines structured testing, simulation, and public road operations so we’re prepared for this next phase.

In this next phase of testing, the first Waymo vehicles without human drivers on freeways will be ridden by employees before it becomes available to the public. 

Cover image: Waymo

More on Waymo:

• Waymo finds that its driverless cars ‘significantly outperformed’ humans
• Waymo robotaxis are now available through Uber in first city
• Using Google Cast in a car is cool, I guess the self-driving Waymo was too