Waymo, a company that is part of the Alphabet holding company together with Google, can be considered one of the pioneers of testing unmanned transport in the United States. It is not surprising that with the help of its proprietary unmanned taxi service Waymo One, it carries out more than 250,000 paid trips in this country every week.
Image source: Waymo
In February, as CNBC notes, this number did not exceed 200,000 trips per week, but in March, Waymo launched corresponding services in the capital of Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The parent holding Alphabet is actively collaborating with Uber, automakers and service companies that help provide transportation services in the United States using prototypes of driverless taxis. The company simply does not have the ability to do everything in this area on its own, according to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
He also added that the outlines of the future business model of this service have not been finally determined, and Waymo is considering the possibility of private ownership of unmanned taxis as one of the options. Waymo is also ready to scale its business in different ways. Waymo One customers in the United States already make paid trips in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. This summer, trips on Waymo One unmanned taxis will also be available to residents of Atlanta, Georgia. By next year, the geography of such trips will expand to Miami, Florida.