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takyon writes:

Waymo to Start First Driverless Car Service Next Month

In just a few weeks, humanity may take its first paid ride into the age of driverless cars. Waymo, the secretive subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is planning to launch the world's first commercial driverless car service in early December, according to a person familiar with the plans. It will operate under a new brand and compete directly with Uber and Lyft.

Waymo is keeping the new name a closely guarded secret until the formal announcement, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been made public.

"Waymo has been working on self-driving technology for nearly a decade, with safety at the core of everything we do," the company said in an emailed statement. A Waymo spokesperson declined to comment on the name of the new service or timing of the launch.

It's a big milestone for self-driving cars, but it won't exactly be a "flip-the-switch" moment. Waymo isn't planning a splashy media event, and the service won't be appearing in an app store anytime soon, according to the person familiar with the program. Instead, things will start small—perhaps dozens or hundreds of authorized riders in the suburbs around Phoenix, covering about 100 square miles.

The first wave of customers will likely draw from Waymo's Early Rider Program—a test group of 400 volunteer families who have been riding Waymos for more than a year. The customers who move to the new service will be released from their non-disclosure agreements, which means they'll be free to talk about it, snap selfies, and take friends or even members of the media along for rides. New customers in the Phoenix area will be gradually phased in as Waymo adds more vehicles to its fleet to ensure a balance of supply and demand.

Related: Google Waymo Vehicles to Hit the Road This Month
Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet
Walmart and Waymo to Trial Driverless Shuttle Service in Phoenix for Grocery Pickups

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Waymo has announced a driverless taxi service called Waymo One, but it will only be usable for around 400 preapproved "early riders" in the Phoenix metro area, rather than the general public. While self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans will be used, they will continue to retain a safety driver behind the wheel.

Waymo's "new" service could be described as a launch in name only:

The banner Waymo is unfurling, though, is tattered by caveats. Waymo One will only be available to the 400 or so people already enrolled in Waymo's early rider program, which has been running in the calm, sunny Phoenix suburb of Chandler for about 18 months. (They can bring guests with them and have been freed from non-disclosure agreements that kept them from publicly discussing their experiences.) More glaringly, the cars will have a human behind the wheel, there to take control in case the car does something it shouldn't.

So no, this is not the anyone-can-ride, let-the-robot-drive experience Waymo and its competitors have been promising for years. Building a reliably safe system has proven far harder than just about everyone anticipated and its cars aren't ready to drive without human oversight. But Waymo promised to launch a commercial service sometime in 2018, it didn't want to miss its deadline and risk its reputation as the leader of the industry it essentially created, and not even the might of Waymo parent company Alphabet can delay the end of the calendar year.

So Waymo is pushing out a software update, tweaking its branding, and calling it a launch.

Also at Reuters, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, and Ars Technica.

See also: Waymo's driverless cars on the road: Cautious, clunky, impressive

Previously: Google/Waymo Self-Driving Minivan Tested with the Public in Phoenix AZ
Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet
Walmart and Waymo to Trial Driverless Shuttle Service in Phoenix for Grocery Pickups
Google's Waymo Plans to Launch a Self-Driving Car Service in December (the service falls short of what is described in this November article)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google's Waymo risks repeating Silicon Valley's most famous blunder: Larry Page drew the wrong lesson from Xerox bungling the PC revolution

Everyone in Silicon Valley knows the story of Xerox inventing the modern personal computer in the 1970s and then failing to commercialize it effectively. Yet one of Silicon Valley's most successful companies, Google's Alphabet, appears to be repeating Xerox's mistake with its self-driving car program.

[...] Google's self-driving car program, created in 2009, appears to be on a similar trajectory. By October 2015, Google was confident enough in its technology to put a blind man into one of its cars for a solo ride in Austin, Texas.

But much like Xerox 40 years earlier, Google has struggled to bring its technology to market. The project was rechristened Waymo in 2016, and Waymo was supposed to launch a commercial driverless service by the end of 2018. But the service Waymo launched in December was not driverless and barely commercial. It had a safety driver in every vehicle, and it has only been made available to a few hundred customers.

Today, a number of self-driving startups are aiming to do to Waymo what Apple did to Xerox years ago. Nuro is a driverless delivery startup that announced Monday that it raised $940 million in venture capital. Another, called Voyage, is testing a self-driving taxi service in one of the nation's largest retirement communities.

Right now, these companies' self-driving services aren't as sophisticated as Waymo's. Their vehicles have top speeds of 25 miles per hour. But Apple started out making under-powered products, too, then it gradually worked its way up-market, ultimately eclipsing Xerox. If Waymo isn't strategic, companies like Nuro and Voyage could do the same thing to the pioneering self-driving company.

Previously: Google's Waymo Plans to Launch a Self-Driving Car Service in December
Waymo Announces Limited Debut of "Driverless" Taxi Service in Phoenix, AZ
Waymo Announces Plans for a Driverless Vehicle Factory in Michigan

Original Submission