{"id":131561,"date":"2025-11-12T18:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T18:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/131561\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T18:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T18:18:09","slug":"googles-waymo-has-started-letting-passengers-take-the-freeway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/131561\/","title":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s Waymo has started letting passengers take the freeway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-14ve0pc\">Waymo\u2019s approach to robotaxi expansion has been slow and steady \u2014 a practice that has meant the <a class=\"inline-stock css-1iix00n\" href=\"https:\/\/robinhood.com\/us\/en\/stocks\/GOOGL\/?source=sherwood\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Google<\/a>-owned autonomous ride-hailing service that launched to the public in 2020 is only just now taking riders on freeways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-14ve0pc\">On Wednesday, Waymo <a href=\"https:\/\/waymo.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/taking-riders-further-safely-with-freeways\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"css-uubm0\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">announced<\/a> that \u201ca growing number of public riders\u201d in the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles can take the highway and are no longer confined to local routes. The company said it will soon expand freeway capabilities to Austin and Atlanta. It also noted that its service in San Jose is now available, meaning Waymos can traverse the entire San Francisco Peninsula. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-14ve0pc\">Waymo\u2019s main competitor, <a class=\"inline-stock css-1iix00n\" href=\"https:\/\/robinhood.com\/us\/en\/stocks\/TSLA\/?source=sherwood\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tesla<\/a>, so far operates an autonomous service in Austin as well as a more traditional ride-hailing service across the Bay Area, where a driver uses Full Self-Driving (Supervised). On the company\u2019s last <a href=\"https:\/\/sherwood.news\/tech\/tesla-posts-best-quarterly-revenue-ever-in-last-quarter-with-ev-tax-credit\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"css-uubm0\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">earnings<\/a> call, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla would expand its robotaxi service to 8 to 10 markets this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waymo\u2019s approach to robotaxi expansion has been slow and steady \u2014 a practice that has meant the Google-owned&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-131561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}