Robotaxi developer Waymo announced that this past January, it surpassed 1 million miles of autonomous driving with no human present in the vehicle. With the news, Waymo joins competitor Cruise as the latest to reach the autonomous milestone but has also publicly shared the data to back up its progress. As previously teased last year, Waymo is also now officially testing driverless rides in Los Angeles.
Waymo was launched in 2009 by Google’s parent company Alphabet, Inc. as a self-driving car project. In 2016, the Google project was officially rebranded as Waymo, derived from “a new way forward in mobility.” Since then, Waymo has tested its various self-driving vehicles in several states.
Additionally, it has been charging driverless rides for people in Chandler, Arizona, since 2019. That was followed by paid rides in San Francisco. At the time of its application to the California DMV, Waymo stated it had logged over 83,000 autonomous miles…