42 Facts About Waymo

Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Waymo operates a commercial self-driving taxi service in the greater Phoenix, Arizona.

Waymo develops driving technology for use in other vehicles, including delivery vans and Class 8 tractor-trailers for delivery and logistics.

Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov.

Waymo has partnerships with multiple vehicle manufacturers to integrate Waymo's technology, including with Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Nissan-Renault, Stellantis, Jaguar Land Rover, and Volvo.

Related searches

Waymo retrofitted the car with light detection and ranging technology, sensors, cameras, and software from his company 510 Systems and named the prototype, the Pribot.

In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and became a new start-up company that is part of Alphabet.

Waymo began testing autonomous minivans without a safety driver on public roads in Chandler, Arizona, in October 2017.

Waymo subsequently decided to continue retrofitting existing car models rather than manufacturing a new design like the Firefly.

In March 2020, Waymo Via was launched after the company's announcement that it had raised $2.

In May 2020, Waymo raised an additional $750 million, bringing their total outside investment to $3 billion.

In May 2022, Waymo launched its Waymo One Trusted Tester program for residents in Downtown Phoenix, Arizona, following internal testing with employees.

In May 2022, Waymo announced that it would be expanding the program to more areas of Phoenix.

In June 2022, Waymo announced a partnership with Uber, under which the former will integrate its autonomous technology into Uber's freight truck service.

In 2017, Waymo unveiled new sensors and chips that are less expensive to manufacture, cameras that improve visibility, and wipers to clear the lidar system.

The in-house production system allows Waymo to integrate its technology to the hardware efficiently.

Waymo officials said the cars the company uses are built for full autonomy with sensors that give 360-degree views and lasers that detect objects up to 300 meters away.

Waymo engineers have created a program called Carcraft, a virtual world where Waymo can simulate driving conditions.

Waymo has created partnerships with Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Lyft, AutoNation, Avis, Intel, Jaguar Land Rover, and Volvo.

Waymo partnered with Intel to use Intel technologies, such as processors, inside Waymo vehicles.

In November 2017, Waymo altered its Arizona testing by removing safety drivers in the driver position from their autonomous Chrysler Pacificas.

Waymo began testing its level 4 autonomous cars in Arizona for several reasons: good weather, simple roads, and reasonable autonomous vehicle laws.

Also, in 2017, Waymo unveiled its test facility, Castle, on 91 acres in Central Valley, California.

In March 2018, Waymo announced its plans to build additional real-world self-driving experiments with the company's self-driving trucks delivering for sister company Google's data centers located in Atlanta, Georgia.

Waymo was the first company to receive a permit, that allows day and night testing on public roads and highways in California.

Related searches

In July 2019, Waymo was permitted by California regulators to transport passengers in its vehicles.

In December 2018, Waymo launched the commercial self-driving car service called "Waymo One", allowing users in the Phoenix metropolitan area to use an app and request a pick-up.

In November 2019, Waymo One was the first autonomous service worldwide operating without any safety drivers in the car.

In September 2020, Waymo announced it had partnered with fellow Alphabet company Verily to provide COVID-19 testing to its front-line employees and partners.

In March 2022, Waymo said that they will begin offering rides in San Francisco without a driver.

Waymo operates in some of its testing markets, such as Chandler, Arizona, at level 4 autonomy with no one sitting behind the steering wheel, sharing roadways with other drivers and pedestrians.

Waymo has worked to improve how its technology responds in construction zones.

Our next step as Waymo will be to let people use our vehicles to do everyday things like run errands, commute to work, or get safely home after a night on the town.

Waymo highlighted four specific business uses for its autonomous tech in 2017: Ridesharing, users can hail cars equipped with Waymo technology via transportation network company apps; trucking and logistics, urban last-mile solutions for public transportation, and passenger cars.

In 2017, Waymo was considering licensing autonomous technology to vehicle manufacturers.

In May 2018, Waymo announced that it planned to allow everyone in Phoenix to request a driverless ride before the end of the year.

In 2018, Waymo launched a pilot program with Google to use autonomous trucks to move freight to its sister company's Atlanta-area data centers.

In June 2020, Waymo announced its plans to focus testing efforts on southwest shipping routes including, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

In October 2020, Waymo announced a global strategic partnership with Mercedes-Benz AG to integrate Waymo's driver technology into a fleet of Freightliner Cascadia semi-trailer trucks.

Waymo has expanded the use of their self-driving technology to commercial delivery vehicles.

In February 2017, Waymo sued Uber and its subsidiary self-driving trucking company, Otto, with allegations of stealing trade secrets and infringing on patents.

Waymo claimed that three ex-Google employees, including Anthony Levandowski, had stolen trade secrets, including thousands of driverless car technology files, from Google before joining Uber.