Last March, Waymo suspended its driverless taxi operations in Arizona due to the pandemic. Now, it has not only started up again, it has opened the service to all members of the public. Previously, it had been available only to about a thousand people who had signed up for and been accepted as “early riders.”
Waymo’s taxis are geofenced, meaning they can only operate in an area that has been carefully and precisely mapped. At the moment, that includes about 50 square miles of Chandler, Mesa, and Tempe, Arizona. Technically, autonomous cars that need maps to work are classed as level 4 vehicles. Level 5 vehicles should be able to drive themselves anywhere without maps.
In response to a tweet about Waymo’s progress, Elon Musk tweeted that level 4 “gives a false sense of victory being close” and that Tesla is aiming for level 5; he claims its “new system is capable of driving in locations we never seen even once.”
If so, I applaud Tesla, but Musk gives no indication of when that system will be generally available. In the meantime, Waymo and other companies are mapping tens or hundreds of thousands of miles of roads each year. If they complete mapping of all 4 million miles of roads in America, what would be the difference between their system and a true level 5 system?
Until all 4 million miles are mapped, few people would want to buy a driverless car that can only cover 50 or possibly a few hundred square miles, which is why Waymo and other companies were focusing on a robotaxi service in the meantime.
Many people had predicted that 2020 would be the year that driverless cars would be introduced on a large scale. But when the pandemic hit, it seemed that would be delayed by a year or two, if only because people would be reluctant to use robotaxis that might be contaminated with some disease left by the previous rider.
Waymo hasn’t said how it plans to sanitize its driverless cars, though some have talked about the use of intense UV lamps. While it is nice to know that Waymo has confidence in its system, until it can persuade the public that it is safe from contamination, opening 50 square miles to robotaxi service doesn’t mean very much.
I’m glad they’re not doing human trials where I live. This is a good reminder for another round of letters urging officials to create testing requirements that mean something. What Waymo & others have done – contrary to their self serving PR – is paltry. No way they should be allowed to have cars w/out a human at this point.