is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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Waymo is finally ready to hit the highway. Starting today, the company’s robotaxis will gradually start to include more highway trips in its routes in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In addition, Waymo’s Bay Area service is extending south to San Jose, including 24/7 curbside access at both terminals of San Jose International Airport — the company’s second airport service after Phoenix.
Since its inception, Waymo’s robotaxis have typically avoided highways, opting instead for longer routes that stick to local roads when ferrying passengers. This has not gone unnoticed by customers, who often note their trips can take longer because the vehicles are prohibited from using routes that travel on highways. But after years of testing, including on public highways with employees as well as on closed courses and in virtual simulation, Waymo says it’s ready to start offering highway trips to a lot more people.
“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup,” Dmitri Dolgov, co-CEO of Waymo, said in a briefing with reporters. “And at scale. So it took time to do it properly with a strong focus on system safety and reliability.”
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