Waymo has kicked off the new year by announcing that their self-driving vehicles in Arizona will no longer be limited to downtown Phoenix and starting this month, their scope will be expanded to include highways around the state capital.
The company's vehicles owned by Alphabet have been driving on these highways last year with a safety driver, unlike in urban areas, where they have been operating fully autonomously for a long time. Additionally, in the past four weeks, they have also included pickups at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, often accessed via highways. Overall, in most major US cities, highways are the easiest way to get from point A to point B.
According to the company's slow but steady policy, autonomous driving services on highways will only be available to employees at the moment, but will be expanded to all users as soon as deemed appropriate. Logically, driving on highways poses new challenges, mainly because higher speeds can amplify the impact of any miscalculations or errors significantly, but the company believes that testing can be done safely. It is worth noting that highways are where another company exclusively focuses on autonomous driving with a completely different approach, Tesla, has developed a reliable one, which I frequently use daily on a twenty-kilometer route to the center of Madrid.
With slow but steady progress, Waymo is achieving the safest progress in fully autonomous driving, something some call level 5: being able to operate a vehicle without any human intervention, almost anywhere on the map and under reasonable road conditions. In fact, the company does not produce self-driving cars, but instead dedicates its efforts to the development of what is called the Waymo driver, an autonomous driving system capable of handling almost any situation and that is performing better than human drivers. Right now, this service is available in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, and it is working to continue expanding the service to more cities.
By mid-2023 and available since 2021, any user can come to these cities, especially the first city to offer the service, Phoenix, download the corresponding app and request an actual self-driving car to take them anywhere in the city. This service has become a regular part of the urban landscape, to the point where they are dubbed as hotels on wheels.
Once again, those who underestimate the potential of high-speed technology have been left in the rearview mirror.
(En Español, Here )