Waymo received approval Friday afternoon from the California Public Utilities Commission to operate a commercial robotaxi service in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Peninsula and San Francisco freeways.
The approval removes the last hurdle for Alphabet to charge for rides in these sprawling areas. Significantly, it breaks new ground for Waymo in one of the nation’s largest cities and unlocks a route to San Francisco International Airport, which is south of the city.
Waymo has been operating a commercial service 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the city of San Francisco since receiving approval from the commission in August. Waymo is also allowed to offer people free self-driving rides in parts of Los Angeles. But until today’s approval, he wasn’t able to charge for rides in Los Angeles.
Last month, the CPUC’s Division of Consumer Protection and Enforcement suspended Waymo’s application to expand its robotaxi service in Los Angeles and San Mateo counties for up to 120 days to allow additional time for review. The CPUC said it received 81 responses and five protests, which the agency said “required some additional time beyond the 30 days to carefully review and incorporate into the staff decision.” The five protests came from the City of South San Francisco, San Mateo County, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance.
Waymo, which began a community tour in Los Angeles in October, was finishing up its final stop in the neighborhood as it awaited final approval.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
The CPUC decision comes just a day after Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana discussed the company’s future and the broader autonomous vehicle industry on stage at StrictlyVC LA. He said Waymo robotaxis had received a “warm welcome” in the city with more than 15,000 people using the service. Mawakana said trip data showed customers used the service for everyday errands — evidence she said suggested the service would do well commercially in Los Angeles.
“It’s exciting to see that about 2,000 of those trips are people going on very, very basic errands, right, which means going on an errand in a Waymo is like using it for your life,” Mawakana said. . “Likewise, people take it to restaurants, bars in the same number, like 2,000 trips. And then 300 of the trips are people who go to school, college as well as K to 12. So we like that signal that people are not just welcoming us warmly, but really integrating us into their lives.”
He said 50,000 people have been put on a waiting list to use the service in Los Angeles.
Mawakana suggested Thursday night that Waymo wouldn’t immediately start charging for rides in Los Angeles if it got approval (which, of course, happened a day later).
“We will expand, as we did in San Francisco, our services before we start charging,” he said. “And I mean, we show up and you can experience this for a few months or several months without paying. And then we have that moment of truth, which we had in San Francisco, which we start charging, and then we realize how many people [have] they really incorporated it into their lives. What price are they willing to pay?’
You can watch the entire interview below.
