Waymo is making big moves across the US this week, with a new 20-city launch and finally letting its self-driving cars run free in Philly.
The autonomous vehicle company announced today that it would expand to Pittsburgh, Baltimore and more.
These are two of the cities where the company plans to deploy cars with human drivers, to map the area before it lets its vehicles drive themselves.
“The data shows Waymo is orders of magnitude safer than human drivers.”
Ethan Teicher, Waymo
“After more than 100 million fully autonomous miles driven on public roads in five major cities and the millions of rides we’ve provided to date, we’re ready to bring this technology to more people in more places,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher told Technical.ly.
“The data shows Waymo is orders of magnitude safer than human drivers,” he said, “and we’re excited to bring the convenience, safety and magic of our service to these cities.”
Waymo, which is a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, rolled out this phase in Philadelphia earlier in the year. Months of testing began over the summer, and were met with strong reactions from residents. Don’t expect to see the autonomous vehicles in Philly immediately, though. It’ll need permission from PennDOT before the full launch, and a spokesperson told WHYY that the company is unsure how long that’ll take.
Leaning into Pittsburgh’s rich autonomous history
Waymo cars, clearly marked and topped with futuristic-looking sensors, are already fully automated in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta.
Reactions to the vehicles have been mixed, as residents raise safety concerns and the impact on human rideshare drivers. One of these new test cities, Pittsburgh, has already been in the throes of this debate for a decade.
As of 2020, the self-driving vehicle industry had created more than 1,900 jobs in Western Pennsylvania since 2015, according to the Allegheny Conference. It started when Uber’s Advanced Technology Group landed in Pittsburgh. That was eventually sold to the now-booming autonomous vehicle company Aurora.
The once-promising self-driving tech startup Argo AI shut down in 2022 after Ford and VW purchased the company a year prior. (It’s not all bad news: Cofounders Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, turned around and launched Stack AV, an AI-powered autonomous trucking company, that’s since raised $1 billion.)
Waymo already has employees in Pittsburgh, the company said in a statement that mentioned the city’s rich history with autonomous tech as a reason for testing there.
“The Carnegie Mellon Tartan Racing team won first place in DARPA’s Urban Challenge — the event that kicked off America’s pursuit of fully autonomous vehicles — and included multiple Waymo alumni who are continuing to lead the development of autonomous driving technology throughout the industry,” the company said.
Heading to Baltimore with the governor’s support
In Baltimore, Waymo said it’s working with state officials to lay the groundwork for a regulatory path to deployment. The debate on how to best approach this has been in the works for a while.
University of Baltimore School of Law professors William Hubbard and Colin P. Starger argue that current state driving laws aren’t enough to also regulate the complexities of autonomous vehicles. Their 2024 report analyzed 70,000 Maryland laws and cited 303 that needed an update.
Today’s announcement, however, came with support from Gov. Wes Moore. “[The Waymo partnership is] going to help spur growth, make our roads safer and get more Marylanders from where they live to where opportunity lies,” he said in a statement on Waymo’s blog.
Philadelphia’s stance, on the other hand, has been more of a cultural hurdle. The biggest challenge for integrating Waymo into Philly could be getting Philadelphians to accept it as part of the city. Waymo said it’ll continue to meet with Philadelphians to see how it can best meet city goals.
But the city’s reputation doesn’t paint a bright picture. After all, Philadelphians destroyed the HitchBOT, a hitchhiking robot that successfully traversed other cities, in 2015.
“Philly is crazy,” Philly resident Suzanne Sheer previously told Technical.ly. “Crazy things are going to happen to those cars.”
