Waymo’s self-driving taxis have started carrying paying customers on freeways, and I think that marks a surprisingly big moment for the company. The service is expanding in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and it quietly changes the pace of what these vehicles can do. By getting onto high-speed highways without a human safety driver sitting up front, the Waymo One ride-hailing service can choose more direct routes that usually feel a bit more natural for everyday travel.
Key Takeaways
- Waymo’s public ride-hailing service now uses freeways for passenger trips in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
- These rides are fully autonomous, meaning there is no human safety driver in the vehicle.
- The vehicles travel at highway speeds, generally up to the posted limit, which is often 65 mph (about 105 km/h).
- This expansion allows for quicker journeys, especially for popular routes like trips to the Phoenix Sky Harbor and San Jose Mineta airports.
Waymo, the autonomous driving company owned by Alphabet Inc., has spent more than a decade developing and refining its technology. Moving onto freeways feels like one of those steps that might have seemed inevitable, yet still carries its own weight. Freeway driving is a different challenge compared to navigating dense city streets. City environments come with unpredictable pedestrians, cyclists, and intersections. On the other hand, freeway driving depends on confidently handling fast-moving traffic, merging at just the right moment, and anticipating the behavior of other drivers over longer stretches.
Most of the vehicles Waymo uses are all-electric Jaguar I-PACE models, outfitted with lidar, radar, and cameras that give them a full 360-degree perspective at any time of day. The company calls its autonomous system the Waymo Driver, and it constantly interprets what the sensors pick up to safely move through traffic. After logging millions of miles across years of testing, the system has been trained to manage more complicated scenarios, including those that appear at highway speeds.
Before letting the public try these freeway routes, Waymo tested the feature for more than a year with its employees through its Trusted Testers program. That early feedback gave the company room to notice quirks or edge cases that show up at high speeds. Now the general public can experience it too, and the Waymo app will decide whether a freeway route makes a trip faster than sticking to surface streets.
This update also gives Waymo a bit more competitiveness against traditional ride-hailing services that have long relied on freeways. For riders, it simply means trips that used to feel slow on city roads, such as traveling from downtown Phoenix to surrounding suburbs, can be noticeably shorter. And perhaps what stands out most is airport access, since those trips usually come with time pressure and depend heavily on freeway travel.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q. Is there a human driver in the car?
A. No. These freeway rides are part of Waymo’s fully autonomous service, which means there is no human safety driver in the driver’s seat.
Q. Where can I take a Waymo on the freeway?
A. The service is available in Waymo’s operational zones in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. This includes routes on major highways like US-101 in the Bay Area and I-10 in Phoenix.
Q. How fast do the Waymo cars go on the freeway?
A. The vehicles travel at the posted speed limits, which on these freeways is often 65 mph (about 105 km/h). The company states the cars will follow speed limits and not speed.
Q. How does Waymo handle safety on a highway?
A. Waymo says its system has undergone extensive testing, including millions of miles of simulations and real-world driving. The vehicles use a combination of lidar, radar, and cameras to see hundreds of meters away and react to traffic conditions.
Q. What company owns Waymo?
A. Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., which is also the parent company of Google.
