Waymo Grows Again – CleanTechnica

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Waymo One is expanding its reach once more, just days after we reviewed the robotaxi service in San Francisco. The Waymo service is expanding into more places in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County.

“Starting today, we’re bringing Waymo One to the San Francisco Peninsula for the first time, adding Daly City, Broadmoor, and Colma to our existing, round-the-clock public ride-hailing service,” Waymo wrote yesterday. And then today it is extending service to Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, Playa Vista, as well as more of Hollywood, Chinatown and Westwood.

It’s interesting to see how Waymo keeps expanding the regions it is already serving before entering new cities. Naturally, that makes sense for being more useful to riders in the places it’s already trying to serve well, and it also must be easier when it comes to understanding and adequately responding to the built environment and traffic rules in those new areas — as they should fit what the computers driving the cars are already used to.

It would be interesting to find out how much Waymo expects these expansions will increase use and its customer base, but the company is not furnishing that information at this time. However, here is some information Waymo is sharing: “After removing the waitlist for our San Francisco service in June, we’ve seen incredible demand from locals and visitors alike. Now, our SF operations cover 55 square miles of the Bay Area — from Fisherman’s Wharf to Serramonte Center — and connect to the Daly City and Colma BART Stations, so even more people can ride.

“Since beginning commercial operations in Los Angeles in March, we’ve had more than 150 thousand people sign up for the waitlist and have been scaling deliberately to align our vehicle supply with rider demand. Angelenos have been enjoying their rides, as the average trip rating has remained above 4.7 out of 5 in that time. Now riders can explore a total of 79 square miles of LA County.

“Waymo One is growing steadily, serving well over 50,000 paid rides per week across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The Waymo Driver is trusted to help parents take their kids to school, vulnerable groups get home safely late at night, and seniors be even more independent, as they all experience the benefits of fully autonomous driving.”

More than 50,000 paid rides a week seems like a solid start. I imagine most taxi companies would be happy with that. Presuming Waymo makes a profit relative to operational costs on each of those rides, it’s really about scaling up enough that Waymo One reaches a size that recoups Waymo’s investment costs and fixed costs.

“In the past few months, we’ve commercially launched a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Los Angeles, added 90 square miles to our Metro Phoenix service, and begun curbside airport pickups and dropoffs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport,” Waymo adds. “In total, members of the public have taken more than 2 million paid trips with Waymo, and our vehicles have driven more than 20 million miles fully autonomously. As our operations grow, so does evidence that Waymo is improving road safety and reducing traffic injuries and fatalities in the places where we operate. […] These expansions build on many years of rigorous testing and evaluation, and our decision to expand our service followed the careful and multilayered approach to safety set out in our safety framework.”

Clearly, Waymo is feeling bullish and thinks the progress it has been making is laying down a marker in the industry. The company doesn’t seem to be aiming for what Baidu over in China is aiming for with its Baidu Apollo robotaxi service: profitability next year. However, you have to think the company has its eyes on that prize somewhere down the road. It may even be feeling the pressure of Tesla’s improving “Full Self Driving” system and robotaxi plans — or perhaps it’s not if it doesn’t believe in Tesla’s approach.

Even without any hint of coming profitability, though, it’s always heartening to see Waymo growing, especially following our glowing review of the service this week on a trip around San Francisco. Keep going, Waymo, keep going.