Boom — Waymo Takes The Freeway (+ Important Note On Waymo’s Approach)

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Waymo took a big step forward today. Well, it has been a very long process of stepping, but I think we can say the foot hit the ground today. Here are a few key notes:

• Waymo now operates in several cities, but it has historically avoided getting on freeways.
• In the past year, the company has announced a stream of new cities it’s going to expand into.
• Waymo announced today that it is going to start giving customers rides on freeways in the Bay Area.
• This is a notable step forward in coverage, improves trip times, and could lead to massive new connections between cities, in metro areas, and servicing airports.
• Yes, this is without safety drivers sitting behind the wheel.

Before I get back to the details of this announcement, I found this statement particularly interesting and telling:

“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup, and at scale,” said Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov. “It took time to do it properly, with a strong focus on system safety and reliability.”

This feels like another case where Waymo probably could have launched the improvement a long time ago, but instead it takes a very long time to test super carefully, give top priority to safety, and not be rushed into things in an irresponsible way. On the one hand, it feels like Waymo has been given forever to scale up, but on the other hand, one can see why it is so trusted and has been provided this long runway. Now, though, it feels like the company is strongly set up for quite fast growth after building a humongous, secure foundation.

It was also noted by TechCrunch that due to the challenges of mastering self-driving on the freeway, the company had incorporated closed-course testing and simulation. “While many assume freeway driving is easier, it comes with its own set of challenges, principal software engineer Pierre Kreitmann said in a recent briefing. He noted that critical events happen less often on freeways, which means there are fewer opportunities to expose Waymo’s self-driving system to rare scenarios and prove how the system performs when it really matters.”

Funny enough, way back before Waymo existed, when it was just the Google self-driving project, the first tests were conducted on freeways between Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I actually recorded videos of these vehicles a couple of blocks from that key free before I knew what I was looking at. The following videos are from August 2012 (forgive the video quality):

Time flies….

Back to the news, Waymo writes:

“The open road symbolizes freedom and unlimited possibility — highlighted especially by the ease and speed by which freeways allow us to get where we’re going. Waymo is now bringing that experience into the autonomous driving age, as we begin welcoming riders to use Waymo on freeways across the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

“We’re offering freeway access to a growing number of public riders and will introduce the service to more over time, including as we expand freeway capabilities to Austin, Atlanta, and beyond — always guided by our commitment to safety and service excellence. Freeway trips make Waymo even more convenient and efficient, whether you’re headed to Sky Harbor International Airport, cruising from Downtown LA to Culver City, or commuting in our newly expanded Bay Area service.”

There are key points there. This opens up access to more locations, important locations, and it is also going to roll out much more quickly in new markets Waymo enters (presumably immediately). How long until you can go from San Francisco to LA in a Waymo, and then on to Phoenix and Austin?

You can now take a Waymo all the way down the San Francisco Peninsula, and you can also get in or out of one on the curbs of the San Jose Mineta International Airport (SJC).

I’ll just end with Waymo’s own ending line, since the company’s communications team does such a good job:

“The future of transportation is here, and it’s only getting better with every mile!”

We can get on board with that.