THE DRIVERLESS CARS cometh. Waymo just became the first company allowed to test fully self-driving cars — the kind with no carbon-based beings behind the wheel — in the state of California.
The outfit that started life as Google’s self-driving car project has been running driver-free cars in Arizona for almost a year, where the state testing rules are far more lax than in California, and where it plans to launch a commercial robo-taxi service by the end of the year. But securing the right to do the same in its home state is still a milestone, and evidence it can win over even comparatively wary regulators to the way of the robot.
To begin, the truly driverless cars will test only at up to 65 mph in the southern Bay Area, in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Palo Alto. (Waymo and its parent company Alphabet are headquartered in Mountain View.) The company said it will inform local governments before expanding its tests any further. And though Waymo has clearly stated its intention to run its own driverless taxi service, the company’s first driver-free passengers will only be employees. Waymo did not say when it will open its cars to the wider California public. …
