Autonomous cars that truly lack a driver are about to hit Los Angeles streets. The self-driving robotaxi service, Waymo, announced this week that it will start testing fully autonomous vehicles in LA “following a rigorous cycle of validation and safety readiness evaluation,” Waymo CEO Dmitri Dolgov wrote on Twitter.

What You Need To Know

  • Waymo has been operating a driverless ride-hail service in Phoenix since October 2020

  • It has been testing autonomous vehicles with a human safety driver in Los Angeles for the past several months

  • Waymo is one of three companies that has a permit to deploy fully autonomous vehicles in California

  • It plans to begin its tests without a safety driver in Santa Monica before expanding to other neighborhoods

In a video post that showed an electric Jaguar I-PACE equipped with Waymo self-driving technology on its roof wheeling through downtown LA, the company said, “there’s no other city like LA, but whether you’re driving in LA, SF or PHX, sharing the road with cyclists, navigating crowds, giving the right of way to joggers, the fundamentals are the same wherever you go.”

Waymo is one of 43 companies that have a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test autonomous vehicles with a human safety driver behind the wheel who can take control if the technology fails. A Waymo spokesperson told Spectrum News the company has spent months autonomously driving across LA neighborhoods with a safety driver, including downtown, the Miracle Mile, Koreatown and Westwood.

The company is gradually ramping up its tests without a safety driver starting in Santa Monica before expanding to other neighborhoods, the spokesperson said. To the company’s knowledge, when testing begins, Waymo will be the first fully autonomous car to drive in the LA metro area.

Based in Mountain View, Calif., Waymo is one of seven companies that have a California permit to test autonomous vehicles without a human safety driver behind the wheel. It is one of three companies, including General Motors’ Cruise and Nuro, Inc., also based in Mountain View, that are allowed to deploy the technology in the state.

Last summer, the California Public Utilities Commission approved Cruise’s application to be the state’s first robotic taxi service in San Francisco. Cruise and Waymo have both been operating robotaxi services in the Bay Area in autonomous vehicles with backup safety drivers. Waymo has been operating a driverless ride-hail in Phoenix since October 2020.