Waymo plans self-driving vehicle test in NYC, eyes expansion
Ride-hailing pioneer Waymo said it aims to bring a fleet of autonomous vehicles to the bustling streets of New York City.
The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, said Wednesday it has applied for a permit with the city’s Department of Transportation to deploy a “small fleet” of self-driving cars for testing in Manhattan beginning next month.
“We have every intention of bringing our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to the city in the future,” Waymo said in a statement.
But — at the beginning, at least — it will be humans, not robots, driving the cars.
The company is pushing for a broader change in New York state law that would allow it to operate fully driverless vehicles in the state, without humans in the car to supervise.
It previously drove some of its vehicles through the densely-populated city for a few months in 2021, but these were fully operated by human drivers and used to map city streets.
It plans to drive vehicles manually throughout Manhattan, like it did four years ago, as it waits for permit approval.
The NYC Department of Transportation and Governor Kathy Hochul’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
“From now until the end of the year, we’re not going to see any autonomous vehicles taking anyone anywhere in the city,” Matt Daus, president of the International Association of Transportation Regulators and former NYC Taxi and Limousine Chair, told The Post.
Waymo currently operates 1,500 fully-electric, autonomous cars across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin.
But New York City comes with its own unique set of challenges – like jaywalkers, cyclists who veer out of bike lanes, horse-drawn carriages, frequent construction work and zig-zagging taxi cabs.
“San Francisco has a lot of hills,” Daus noted, in countering the doubters.
“It is a city that’s vibrant and has people crossing the street. San Francisco and LA are big cities. If they can do it on the West Coast, why should New York City be left behind?”
Waymo has grown massively since its creation in 2009 as Google’s Self-Driving Car Project.
Now, it provides more than 250,000 fully autonomous paid trips each week across major US cities.
The service claims to make “roads safer” with fewer injury-causing crashes compared to an average human driver.
But operating vehicles without human drivers is not without its complications.
Most recently, Waymo was forced to halt its self-driving service in downtown Los Angeles after five of its vehicles were set ablaze during volatile anti-ICE protests.
Earlier in the year, it recalled nearly its entire fleet over a software glitch that could make the vehicles more likely to crash into chains, gates and other roadway barriers.
The vehicles have enraged California residents with incessant beeping, “trapped” passengers inside while screeching to a stop in the middle of a highway and been involved in nearly 20 crashes.
