Waymo said on Wednesday that he has applied for a permit to test his autonomous vehicles in New York City, the first step of the Alphabet company in a sticky regulatory process to bring his robotax to the largest city in the United States.
Waymo requested a permit with the New York City Transport Department to operate their self-employed jaguar and-pace vehicles with a human security operator behind Manhattan. The demonstration or permission of proof of autonomous vehicles in New York requires that the human driver be able to assume; an insurance policy of $ 5 million; And all test vehicle operators must be properly trained in the safe operation of the test vehicle.
New York’s law is especially prohibitive for autonomous vehicles. Although a permit may be noticed, Waymo is far from being able to launch commercial operations in the city, or even try without a human security operator behind the wheel.
However, Waymo presses and said that he defends a change in state law that would allow a vehicle without a human to the wheel. The company also seeks to build good will in New York and the state working with various organizations such as Madd NY, Yai, National Federation of Blind and Bronx Community College.
Waymo told Techcrunch that he has had positive talks with the legislators this year and hopes to continue moving forward in regulatory changes. New York’s law claims that anyone who operates a motor vehicle must have At least one hand (or prosthesis) in the direction mechanism at all times. Changing this writing will be key to waymo, you can finally deploy driverless vehicles.
Other companies have tried to try in New York before, included Mobileye And the cruise now closed. But these efforts never materialized beyond a few demonstrations or pilots.
Of course, New York City has other challenges beyond regulations. The city is Chock-a-Block with cars, trucks, delivery vans, bicycles, buses and, important, people, all of them. San Francisco, one of the markets that Waymo operates today, is also a lively city with many of the same challenges. NYC brings this complexity to a factor of 10.
Waymo has seen NYC’s mass market for years. By 2021, the company deployed its Chrysler Pacifica Minivans now retired, the first self-citizens vehicles in their test fleet- Driving and map manually Manhattan. The company said at the time that each vehicle would have two people, one for driving and one in the passenger seat to help lead the driver’s activity, supervise the software of the vehicle in real time, evaluate the performance and record comments.
These vehicles were never operated in autonomous mode, although they were all equipped with the fifth generation Waymo driver, which was their most current and advanced self-translation system at that time.
For the past four years, Waymo has been reduced to numerous other places. The company offers more than 250,000 completely freelance trips every week in various North -Americans, including Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco.
