Waymo Rolls Out Driverless Vans in Arizona
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Waymo is rolling out self-driving vans for the first time without anyone behind the wheel, the company’s next step in its quest to bring automated vehicles to consumers.
Over the next few months, the company, spun off from Google and based in Mountain View, Calif., will offer driverless rides in its souped-up fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans to members of the public.
“What you’re seeing now marks the start of a new phase for Waymo and for the history of this technology,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik said in a speech in Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday. “Fully self-driving cars are here.”
Waymo already has been offering rides since April to a group of Phoenix-area residents enrolled in an “early-rider program.” But until now, the cars have had human monitors in the driver’s seat, just like other autonomous test cars driven on public roads by General Motors, Ford, and Uber, among other companies.
In a report filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Waymo reported that its self-driving cars needed to be “disengaged,” or have a human driver take over, 124 times in 2016. That’s over nearly 636,000 miles of driving. The number of disengagements per 1,000 miles dropped to 0.20 from 0.80 the year before, according to Waymo’s filing.
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