John Krafcik, the Waymo company's CEO, recently announced that their self-driving vehicles have been on public roads with no human in the driver's seat- making them the first to accomplish this in the industry. Waymo is the autonomous vehicle division of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company. They also cooperate with Fiat-Chrysler, Lyft, and Avis as partners in their business.

 

Waymo has been operating these autonomous minivans on public roads in Arizona without any drivers since mid-October. The car was test driven within a 100-square-mile limit area in the town of Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix. Waymo said that in the future they would enlarge the driving area to collect more data, following a successful run in Chandler. The first group to experience this new car will be the premier Waymo rider group who joined the operation in Chandler last April.

“This is the most advanced vehicle we’ve developed to date” Krafcik said in his speech about the new addition to the Waymo family. “Everything in it is designed and built for full autonomy. Our combination of powerful sensors gives our vehicles a 360-degree view of the world. The lasers can see objects in three dimensions, up to 300 meters away. We also have short range lasers that stay focused close-up to the side of the vehicle. Our radars can see underneath and around vehicles, tracking moving objects usually hidden from the human eye.”

Krafick invited a group of reporters to visit Castle, a 91-acre facility in California’s Central Valley which was used by Waymo as the training course for the autonomous vehicles. At the facility the township of Chandler expressed their excitement and welcomed Waymo with open arms in a meeting with the company.

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According to Waymo’s statement, Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny said “Waymo's work here in Chandler is groundbreaking as they work toward their goal of fully autonomous vehicles. At the same time, this research and development taking place in our community will ultimately make our roads safer and provide new freedom for those unable to drive.”

This technology reached level four autonomy which means there is genuinely no human behind the wheel, and the car will drive all by itself. It’s an affirmation of Waymo’s endeavor, and also made Waymo a formidable competitor with other more experienced and larger car companies.

However, because Waymo is testing their car in Arizona, a lot of reporting about the process is not comprehensive. Based on Arizona’s law, companies do not need to publish about any accidents involved in the experimental stages of the vehicles, and the number of times that a person may need to take over while driving. Waymo still released their first safety report,  a forty-one page document that described the car’s test drive.  This test drive involved 3.5 million miles on public road and 2.5 million in simulation.

For Waymo this is not the end of the road, in terms of inventing. their next big goal is a commercial ride-hail service where a customer uses an app like Lyft or Uber to hail an autonomous minivan.

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“People will get to use our fleet of on-demand vehicles, to do anything from commute to work, get home from a night out, or run errands,” Krafcik said.