Waymo finally launches an actual public, driverless taxi service

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After covering Waymo for several years, I’ve learned to take the company’s announcements with a grain of salt.

In 2018, for example, Waymo said it would launch a fully driverless commercial service by the end of the year. Waymo did release a service called Waymo One in December 2018, but it came with a couple of huge asterisks: every vehicle had a safety driver, and the service was only open to a small group of people.

But today Waymo finally seems to be launching the taxi service it promised two years ago: one that’s fully driverless and open to the public. Waymo told Ars that the service will initially operate in a 50-square-mile area in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler, Tempe, and Mesa.

Waymo’s rollout of driverless technology has been so slow and confusing that it can be easy to lose sight of what a remarkable accomplishment this is. In the last year or two, as driverless technology has failed to live up to earlier hype, it has become fashionable to claim that driverless technology is still years or even decades away.

But that isn’t true. Members of the public who live in the Chandler area can hail a fully driverless taxi today.

Waymo’s big challenge now is economics, not just technology

Waymo’s decision to offer fully driverless rides to the general public signals that the company believes it can do so safely. The question now is how quickly it can scale its service up nationally

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