The self -driving unit of Alphabet, Waymo, announced on Wednesday that it is planning to resume the autonomous vehicle tests in New York City next month as part of its broader efforts to scale up activities in the United States. The move comes in the midst of the intensifying competition in the Robotaxi room, in which Tesla also prepares for the launch of limited tests of his autonomous taxi service in Austin, Texas.
Testing with human specialists in Manhattan
Waymo has submitted an application to the New York City Department of Transportation to start testing a small fleet of autonomous vehicles in Manhattan. Initially, these cars will be powered manually, with a trained specialist behind the wheel, as required by local regulations. If approved, the deployment would mark the first sanctioned autonomous vehicle tests on the public road in New York City.
“This is not an expansion, but we are planning to bring our fully autonomous Ride-Hailing service to the city in the future,” Waymo said in a statement.
New York's state law currently prohibits the operation of autonomous vehicles without present human driver. Waymo confirmed that it pleads for an amendment to this law to ultimately allow fully operations without a director in the state.
Return to trusted soil
Waymo's upcoming return to Manhattan follows his earlier presence in the city in 2021, when manual driving and data collection carried out to train his self -driving systems. The company regards the dense, complex urban environment of New York as a critical test bed for the continuous progress of his technology.
Expansion on the west coast
Parallel with his plans in New York, Waymo is also expanding its operational footprint in California. The company started rolling out autonomous Ride-Hailing services in more areas of the San Francisco and Silicon Valley peninsula. Last month it received approval of the regulations to increase its coverage in the state.
Waymo is the addition of new services in cities such as Brisbane, South San Francisco, Millbrae and Burlingame, and is expanding in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and extra parts of Los Angeles. Although it has been approved to operate in San Jose, it has not yet announced when it will launch services there.
Commercial robotaxis
Waymo remains the only American company that has a commercial robotaxi service with paying passengers. With a fleet of more than 1500 vehicles, the company is currently running more than 250,000 journeys a week in large cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles in California, Phoenix in Arizona and Austin in Texas.
The renewed activity of Waymo and the upcoming Tesla Trial Signal Signal Acceleration Momentum in the American autonomous vehicle industry, where both companies want to shape the future of urban mobility by scalable, rowless rows without rows.
