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Waymo Joins GM's Cruise Offering Driverless Services in San Francisco to Limited Employees

After GM's Cruise opened up to the public in San Francisco last month, Waymo announced on Wednesday evening that it had started offering driverless rides to employees in the city. Upping the ante in a race with giant car manufacturer General Motors Co to commercialize the technology, Reuters reported.
Waymo Autonomous Driving Technology 15 photos
Photo: Waymo
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Tech seems to be evolving faster than we can comprehend. Brace yourself for self-driving vehicles if you are just getting used to electric cars. Yes! The future is finally here, and the U.S. federal vehicle safety regulators have given the green light for their production and deployment.

Waymo also introduced driverless cars to employees in Phoenix, but with safety drivers behind the wheel, intending to open the tech for public testing.

Waymo is a pioneer of autonomous driving technology and began the first U.S. driverless taxi operation service in 2020. A decade after its inception as a project inside Google.

While the company has made significant strides in driverless technology, it has not expanded beyond the downtown Phoenix area, covering about 129.5 square kilometers (50 square miles).

The company already runs the tech in several markets in addition to its trucking operations.

Driverless vehicles offer a lot of positives. Even though they are autonomous, there will be fewer fatalities on the road, more parking provisions, and less likelihood of traffic snarl-ups. The only demerit of autonomous driving technology is a bizarre study that projects there'll be a massive organ shortage.

Last year in August, Waymo started offering free driverless rides to a limited number of San Francisco employees (with safety drivers) using Jaguar vehicles with lidar sensors mounted up top.

Even with a green light from regulators to manufacturers to produce and deploy, Waymo still needs at least two more permits from California authorities, including the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) to begin charging a fee to clients for their services.

GM's Cruise is already running a fully driverless ride service for the San Francisco public for free.
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About the author: Humphrey Bwayo
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Humphrey is a car enthusiast whose love and passion for automobiles extended into collecting, writing, driving, and working on cars. He got his passion for cars from his Dad, who spent thousands of hours working on his old junky 1970 E20 Toyota Corolla. Years later, he would end up doing the same with a series of lemons he’s owned throughout his adult life.
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