Waymo has opened up its driverless taxi service to everyone in Los Angeles, without need for an invite code or waitlist, but it still remains with the same service area it had before and doesn’t yet cover the whole area around LA.
While we’re all waiting for the perpetually-delayed Tesla robotaxi or actually autonomous FSD, Waymo, Google’s driverless robotaxi service, has been offering private self-driving taxi rides to the public in its autonomous electric I-Pace vehicles for some time now. The company recently announced it will add Hyundai Ioniq 5s to its fleet in the future.
The current I-Pace cars currently only work in certain geofenced areas that have been well-mapped by Waymo in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Waymo is also testing for employee riders in a small area in Austin, Texas, with public rides coming “later this year.”
In August, Waymo expanded these areas to encompass more of SF & LA, but until now, LA ridership was restricted only to invited users, either through waiting on a waitlist or getting an exclusive invite code.
But today the company is opening up ridership to everyone, waitlist or not. Previously the app had been working through a waitlist of around 300,000 signups, though it was free to sign up so many did just out of curiosity.
Now, all you need to do is download the Waymo One app and get riding – as long as your ride is on surface streets somewhere along the belt between Santa Monica and Downtown.
While Waymo expanded its area earlier this year, it didn’t further expand it today. So that’s the same roughly 80 square mile area as yesterday, but the company is looking forward to “growing its service area to cover more of the city in the future.”
Late last year, we tested Waymo’s driverless taxi on a chaotic Venice Beach weekend, and came away quite impressed at what the car could do, despite some seriously challenging situations – and a few big mistakes. We’ve got a long writeup and video of the experience if you’d like to see more.
But now, the system is open to the public, so you can also just ride it yourself if you’re in one of the covered areas.
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