Waymo is once again expanding its driverless taxi service areas in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, adding over 80 square miles total between the three areas.
The move comes less than a week before the tentative, much-anticipated launch of Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, another market that Waymo operates in.
Waymo currently operates a driverless taxi service in several areas around the country, with three distinct service areas in California – San Francisco, nearby Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles.
Those service areas have gradually gotten larger over time, as Waymo tests and maps new roads that it’s confident its vehicles can operate on autonomously. Waymo has also gradually rolled out its service to wider and wider audiences, typically starting in new areas with employee-only ridership, then a gradual release to the public.
LA and SF are fully public now, while the Silicon Valley area only opened a few months ago and is not fully publicly available for ridership. Waymo’s SF and Silicon Valley service areas are disconnected, so despite being nearby, you can’t ride a Waymo from one to the other.
Today and tomorrow, all three of those California service areas are increasing in size substantially, adding about 50% to the total service area in the state, bringing it to a total of around 250 square miles.
As of today, riders in San Francisco now have access to much more of the peninsula, including Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae, and all the way down to Burlingame.
The nearby Silicon Valley area isn’t fully open to the public yet, but that too expanded today, into Menlo Park and covering more of Palo Alto.
LA service is also expanding, though it’s not quite usable yet today – the expansion will take place tomorrow, June 18, for the LA area. This area is gaining new coverage in just about every direction, rather than expanding out in one direction like the SF expansion.
The new LA area covers Playa Del Rey, Ladera Heights, Echo Park, Silverlake, more of Inglewood and all of famous Sunset Boulevard.
The new service area encompasses UCLA for the first time, though it had previously gone up to Westwood, right next to campus. Waymo had previously expanded to encompass Howard Hughes center and the Inglewood stadium and the Forum (I hate calling stadia by their corporate names…) earlier this year, adding great options for those who want to avoid parking or who are thinking of imbibing liquids that are not conducive to operating heavy machinery.
Notably, the new SF and LA service areas both do not include their local international airports. The SF area skirts around SFO, keeping some distance to the west of the 101, and the LA area goes right up to the North edge of LAX but doesn’t quiiiite get there.
It looks like it would be possible to get a drop off spot within an easy walk of LAX, perhaps at the long-term parking lots just nearby, but Waymo’s area also stops just a couple hundred yards short of the “LAX-it” lot specifically set up for ride-hailing app usage.
Currently, Waymo’s Phoenix service area does include service to Sky Harbor airport, but it looks like California riders will have to wait a little longer for something like that. The Silicon Valley service area does now encompass Palo Alto airport, and LA encompasses Santa Monica airport, but those are both tiny airports more for private planes or enthusiasts.
So far, Waymo can’t be used on the freeways in Los Angeles, though it can in San Francisco for some riders. This means that for certain cross-town trips, taking a Waymo is likely quite a bit slower than otherwise.
But the service is currently testing on LA’s freeways, and we expect it to release that service to the public soon.
If you’d like to see a (very long) writeup/video of our ride in a Waymo when it first opened its LA area, see here: We tested Waymo’s driverless taxi in LA in the perfect chaos of a Venice Beach weekend
Comparisons to Tesla before robotaxi launch
It’s somewhat of a different approach than that taken by Tesla, another company that has been promising autonomous driving for many years, but has yet to deliver it.
Tesla’s level 2 Autopilot driver assist system was first available on highways, rather than surface streets. Highways, despite being higher speed, are much safer and less complex than surface streets, since they are well-marked and don’t have cross-traffic or road users with other modes of transportation. So, theoretically, they should be easier to operate on.
It’s interesting that Waymo started with surface streets, which are a more complex problem, and is available in some fairly complex cities to drive in, as well. While its first service area, Phoenix, is a relatively easy city to drive in, San Francisco is very difficult to drive in and Los Angeles has plenty of complexity as well.
Waymo’s system is a “level 4” system according to the SAE’s Levels of driving automation, in contrast with Tesla’s current level 2 system (which both Autopilot and FSD fall under). A level 2 system means the car can do a lot of tasks, but responsibility still falls on the driver at all times. A level 4 system can operate with no driver at all, but only in limited circumstances (in this case, geofencing). Tesla’s Austin rollout this weekend would be level 4 – if it doesn’t rely fully on teleoperation.
The comparison to Tesla is also relevant in that, while Waymo has been operating driverless taxis for years now, Tesla has been talking about it, but hasn’t yet done it. For over a decade, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised that a Tesla would be able to drive itself, with nobody in the car, “next year” – continually pushing back the timeline each year.
Now, supposedly, the service will come out in less than a week, as Tesla says it will start offering autonomous rides in Austin on June 22.
This comes after, and I quote, “several days” of testing – again, a contrast to Waymo’s method, which has included months of testing in markets before gradually rolling out to employees, limited public release, and then wide public releases, whenever they add new service areas or modes (such as highway driving).
Yesterday, Electrek released a report about the haphazard nature of Tesla’s driverless service rollout (and another about an erroneous Bloomberg report comparing Waymo and Tesla’s safety). Rest assured we will be watching the launch closely, whether it happens next week, or “next year,” as has been promised for the last decade or so.
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