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Waymo is kicking off the process of making its robotaxi service in Silicon Valley commercially available to everyone. The company announced today that its ridehailing app Waymo One will now be available 24/7 to certain customers across a 27-square-mile service area in California that includes Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale.
Previously, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were only accessible to the company’s employees for trips across Silicon Valley, which includes Google and Waymo’s respective headquarters. That contrasts with Waymo’s publicly available, 24/7 robotaxi service a few miles north in San Francisco.
Initially, Waymo’s robotaxis will only be available on an invite-only basis to a select group of Waymo One customers whose zip codes are within the service area. The company will gradually add more riders over time, and recommends keeping an eye on the Waymo One app for future updates on access.
The news follows the launch of Waymo’s first collaboration with Uber in Austin, where Uber customers can be matched with a Waymo robotaxi within a defined service area. Waymo’s partnership with Uber will eventually expand to Atlanta later this year, but the company is still operating its own ridehailing app in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
Before it was Waymo, it was Google’s self-driving car project. In 2009, Google’s founders, Sergy Brin and Larry Page, challenged the project’s engineers to drive autonomously without human intervention or disengagements along ten 100-mile routes criss-crossing Silicon Valley. By December 2009, the team had completed their first route, and nine months later in mid 2010, they wrapped up the last.
Eventually, Google’s self-driving car project “graduated” to become an independent company called Waymo, and moved to its own headquarters in Mountain View.
Waymo is essentially coming full circle by launching a commercial, fully driverless robotaxi service in the Valley. “Opening our fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Silicon Valley marks a special milestone in our Bay Area journey,” Waymo’s Chief Product Officer Saswat Panigrahi said in a statement. “This is where Waymo began and where we’re headquartered. Now we’re bringing seamless rides, safer streets, and sustainable transportation to our local community.”
