Waymo, the driverless ride-hailing company owned by Google parent company Alphabet, has opened its Waymo One services to the public in San Francisco.
Waymo announced that Waymo One is now available to anyone in San Francisco, California, as shared in a press release on Tuesday. The news means that users will no longer have to sign up to join a wait list for the service, and anyone can now download the app and hail one of the company’s Jaguar I-Pace self-driving vehicles.
“I enjoy riding in Waymo cars and appreciate the ease of transportation,” said Charles Renfroe, Openhouse SF Development Manager and Waymo rider, in the release. “Members of our community, especially transgender and gender non-conforming folks, don’t have to worry about being verbally assaulted or discriminated against when riding with Waymo.”
According to the company, roughly 30 percent of rides in San Francisco are to local businesses, while around 36 percent of riders use the service to connect to public transit platforms such as BART or Muni. The company also says its fleet is not only completely electric with its Jaguar I-Pace units, but it’s also sourced by 100 percent renewable energy through the city’s
Check out Waymo’s short video from the announcement below.
Waymo has been operating rides in San Francisco since 2021, and it gained approval to operate paid rides 24 hours a day last August.
Last month, Waymo expanded driverless ride-hailing services to seven new cities around the San Francisco Bay Area, after gaining approval to launch new service regions in April. The company has also been given the green light to deploy paid driverless ride-hails in Los Angeles.
Despite the round of approvals, the company also faced protests of the decision from a handful of organizations and municipalities, including the City of South San Francisco, San Mateo County, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance.
The news also comes as Tesla prepares to launch its own robotaxi platform in August, which will be based on its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.
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