Even self-driving leader Waymo is struggling to reach full autonomy

Enlarge (credit: Waymo)

The Wednesday rollout of Waymo One, Waymo’s commercial self-driving taxi service, falls far short of expectations the company itself set earlier in the year.

In late September, a Waymo spokeswoman told Ars by email that the Phoenix service would be fully driverless and open to members of the public—claims I reported in this article.

We now know that Waymo One won’t be fully driverless; there will be a driver in the driver’s seat. And Waymo One is open to the public in only the narrowest, most technical sense: initially it will only be available to early riders—the same people who have been participating in Waymo’s test program for months.