Waymo, the U.S. leader in autonomous driving, begins operating its robotaxi service in Atlanta today, entering its fifth major U.S. city as it begins to significantly scale up its commercial operations.
Just as in Austin, where Waymo began operating robotaxis earlier this year, the company is partnering with Uber for both ride booking and vehicle service, including cleaning and repairs at depots for the fleet. The company didn’t say how many vehicles will be operating in Atlanta, but initially the service will be available in a 65-square-mile zone in the central part of Georgia’s capital city, spanning from downtown to the Buckhead and Capitol View neighborhoods.
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Waymo’s latest launch comes as Elon Musk’s Tesla began giving paid robotaxis rides in Austin over the weekend for a small group of preselected shareholders and owners. The launch, which earned much publicity and a share price bump, included human safety monitors in the front seat and chase cars keeping close tabs on a dozen or so Model Ys, which were also tracked remotely. That’s closer to the early-stage testing Waymo and other autonomous tech companies have done for years, but which didn’t charge people to ride along.
“Bulls will point to yesterday’s event as the start of a new era for Tesla, one which bulls and believers have been awaiting for a long time. They see the tech working well with a clear path of scaling, and point to Tesla now generating revenue on driverless rides as a critical milestone,” Barclays analyst Dan Levy said in a research note. “We believe the much better question ahead is on the path of scaling, which we believe will be long, and we caution against overoptimism.”
The Dawn Project, a group created by software entrepreneur Dan O’Dowd that’s critical of Musk’s self-driving claims, tallied errors made by Tesla’s Austin robotaxi fleet on June 22. In one incident, a vehicle “failed to complete a left turn and panicked, whipping the steering wheel back and forth. It then drove on the wrong side of the road, failed to correct itself despite there being two open lanes for it to move into, and continued to drive down the wrong side of the road,” it said. In another video, a Tesla “phantom braked twice for a stationary police car.” Others showed riders being left in the middle of the street after asking the cars they were in to pull over and let them out.
Waymos already operate with no human technicians on board in Los Angeles, Austin, and the Phoenix and San Francisco metro areas. The company plans to launch in Miami and is testing in multiple locations, including San Diego, Nashville, Washington, DC, New York City, Las Vegas and Tokyo. Before launching in Austin, the company said in April that it was booking more than 250,000 paid rides a week. With the additions of Austin and Atlanta, and recent expansions of its service area in Los Angeles and to more San Francisco Bay Area cities, it’s likely up to at least 300,000 paid rides a week. Waymo doesn’t disclose revenue yet, though Forbes estimates it likely booked $100 million of rides last year.
Besides Tesla, its other primary rival is Amazon’s Zoox, which plans to begin giving paid rides in its custom-designed robotaxi—a small, van-like vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors—late this year in Las Vegas.
Atlanta commuters who want to use Waymo’s service can select an “autonomous rides” option in the Uber app to help hail a Waymo, the companies said.
