Waymo’s self-driving minivan spotted in San Francisco

Publicly, Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, says the overwhelming majority of its autonomous vehicle testing is going down in 5 cities: Mountain read, California; state capital, Texas; Kirkland, Washington; Phoenix, Arizona; and last, Detroit, Michigan. however it might appear the corporate neglected to inform America a couple of crucial sixth city: its home turf of metropolis.

TechCrunch obtained footage of a Waymo autonomous passenger van on the fog-soaked streets of metropolis, forcing the corporate to admit that it's came back to its town of origin, wherever it initial began testing back in 2009. A Waymo voice failed to in real time answer a call for participation for comment.


It’s a big move for a handful reasons. The addition of metropolis to its roll of check cities could be a sign that Waymo is fascinated by braving denser, a lot of engorged urban streets when many years of protruding to smaller, a lot of low-slung communities. And it might seem to be an effort across the bow of weight unit, that has been testing its Cruise autonomous vehicles in metropolis and plans to eventually launch a public ride-hail program within the town.

Waymo says it's tested its autonomous minivans in twenty four cities across the America in a shot to show its vehicles to a spread of environments, weather, and road conditions. In metropolis, Waymo can have the prospect to alter significant fog and also the steep hills that town is known, also as thousands of bicyclists, pedestrians, and extremely unhealthy drivers.

Last year, the corporate began testing its minivans on public roads in Arizona while not human safety drivers behind the wheel. within the weeks to return, it says it'll be gap these vehicles to the members of its Early Rider program for a ride-hailing journeys. There’s no word on once this program can expand to alternative cities.

Update Jan twelfth, 1:36pm ET: A voice for Waymo aforesaid, “San Francisco was one amongst the primary cities wherever we have a tendency to tested our self-driving cars, qualitative analysis back to 2009 once we traveled everything from street to the Golden Gate Bridge. currently that we've got the world’s initial fleet of totally self-driving cars running in Arizona, the unsmooth and foggy streets of metropolis can offer our cars even a lot of observe in numerous terrains and environments.”