By Henry Payne and Grant Schwab, MediaNews Group<\/p>\n
Robot cars are coming to Detroit streets.<\/p>\n
Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, said Monday that its self-driving fleet is headed to the Motor City. The electric autonomous ride-hailing service has become a fixture in cities like Phoenix and San Francisco, where hundreds of vehicles \u2014 instantly recognized by their rooftop Lidar arrays \u2014 service hundreds of thousands of customers with no driver behind the robotaxis\u2019 spinning steering wheel.<\/p>\n
Recently, the service expanded to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Austin \u2014 and now it is expanding again with service in Detroit, plus San Diego and Las Vegas. Detroit is significant because it\u2019s Waymo\u2019s first northern market. Waymo said the service is targeted to operate 365 days a year through rain, sleet and snow.<\/p>\n
The service is also notable because it uses Zeekr minivans, the first Chinese electric auto brand on U.S. streets. At its inception in Phoenix, Waymo used Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which have been phased out over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting next week, you\u2019ll see us manually driving around the city as we familiarize ourselves with Detroit\u2019s historic streets before moving to autonomous operations,\u201d Waymo said in a press release. \u201cWe\u2019ll arrive with a mixed fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles with the 5th-gen Waymo Driver and Zeekr RT vehicles equipped with our 6th-gen Waymo Driver, which will be key to driving in winter weather.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waymos are hailed by an app similar to Uber and Lyft. Waymo is the most-used robot service in the United States and is in fierce competition with Amazon\u2019s Zoox and Tesla Inc. robotaxis to bring driver-free ride-hailing services to U.S. customers. The latter service, which recently started testing in Austin, Texas, with human monitors on board, aims to be more affordable than Waymo by eschewing expensive Lidar arrays and navigating solely by cameras.<\/p>\n
Waymo said that it is coordinating closely with local officials,\u00a0including the Michigan Department of Transportation and the city of Detroit, as it begins its step-by-step testing approach in the Motor City. Neither MDOT nor the city offered comments ahead of the Monday announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re proud of our roots in Metro Detroit, including in Novi, where we\u2019ve had an engineering team for many years,\u201d the company statement said. Waymo\u2019s Novi office employs several dozen engineers, technicians and test drivers.<\/p>\n
The company has prepared for its Detroit rollout through launches in other cities, closed-track testing and forays into areas like the Upper Peninsula with snowy winter conditions. A recent Waymo\u00a0blog post\u00a0discussed efforts to create an \u201call-weather Driver.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first phase of the Detroit rollout will feature human drivers manually operating the vehicles to collect a highly detailed, high-definition map of the city, Waymo technical program manager Jake Tretter said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Once that phase is complete, the vehicles will roam the streets \u2014 supervised \u2014 using their autonomous technology while a human operator sits in the driver\u2019s seat to make sure performance is safe and smooth.<\/p>\n
The company did not provide a timetable for when testing phases would end and the public would be able to hail self-driving rides from the Waymo app.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to do it as soon as possible,\u201d Tretter said. But he also stressed the importance of building \u201ctrust and understanding\u201d so Detroiters are ready for an eventual full launch in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s harder to lose the trust and try to regain that than it is to slowly build that trust and make sure that we\u2019re working in unison with the community and policy and legislators,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The Detroit expansion will \u201cfirst and foremost\u201d focus on the city\u2019s urban core near Comerica Park, Ford Field and Little Caesars Arena before expanding out slowly from there.<\/p>\n
Waymo began operating as a service open to the public in Phoenix in October 2020. Since its introduction in San Francisco in 2023, it has become a tourist sensation as well as ferrying locals on their daily rounds. Waymo has been validated over 100 million fully autonomous miles and 10 million-plus trips.<\/p>\n
In May of this year, Waymo released a study saying that over 56.7 million miles, its vehicles had 92% fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians and 82% fewer crashes with injuries to cyclists compared to human drivers. The company\u2019s\u00a0latest data\u00a0show similar rates across 96 million miles.<\/p>\n
Still, its robotaxis have faced scrutiny from safety regulators, including a 14-month probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into more than a dozen minor crashes in which Waymo vehicles ran into parked cars and other stationary objects. Waymo recalled 1,200 vehicles, leading NHTSA to close the inquiry, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
In addition to eventually opening its service to the public in Detroit, Waymo is partnering with organizations like the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many people living with epilepsy, transportation is a significant barrier. The Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan celebrates organizations like Waymo, which are leading the way in providing accessible and safe transportation solutions,\u201d said Andrea Schotthoefer, the foundation\u2019s president. \u201cTheir efforts show what\u2019s possible and inspire collective action toward a future where transportation barriers no longer stand in the way of opportunity and inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Henry Payne and Grant Schwab, MediaNews Group Robot cars are coming to Detroit streets. Waymo LLC, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[181,23,143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-36638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-oakland","11":"tag-oakland-headlines","12":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}