With Tesla beginning testing of its robotaxi service this summer near the company headquarters in Texas, the current leader in that area, Waymo, is looking to extend its lead by opening service nearby in the Lone Star State.
What's happening?
According to Forbes, Waymo is planning to open autonomous driving services in Dallas starting next year. One of the many companies under the umbrella of Google's parent company, Alphabet, Waymo has been the industry leader in self-driving vehicles pretty much from the jump.
Waymo currently operates fully in five cities: San Francisco, Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin — the latter being where Tesla has debuted its public testing. The Google-affiliated company is also testing in another 10 cities, including New York City and Philadelphia.
"The Waymo driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, and the team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in July. "We hope to serve riders in all 10 in the future."
Waymo is also testing in Washington, D.C.; Houston; Miami; San Antonio; San Diego; Nashville, Tennessee; Boston; and Tokyo. The company will partner with rental company Avis for maintenance and charging of its vehicles in Dallas.
Why is Waymo's expansion important?
Self-driving cars have long been touted as the next frontier in automotive advancement, and multiple companies are currently in the mix to get a foothold in that market. Volkswagen and Tesla are two of the biggest names trying to get a leg up, but everyone has a lot of catching up to do with Waymo.
While Volkswagen isn't looking to take over the market and has opted to partner with municipalities in its quest to get a chunk of the robotaxi pie, Tesla has long been seen as Waymo's biggest competitor.
However, Elon Musk's company has gotten off to a slow start with its program and is currently only cleared for testing in a limited section of Austin. Those tests have been progressing slowly, with a fair number of concerning incidents of near-misses in traffic. That said, Waymo has had its own safety issues at times in its development, including a recall earlier this year connected to glitches causing the detection to miss thin objects like chains and gates.
That Waymo is continuing to grow while Tesla is still in its early stages is a troubling sign for the Musk-run EV manufacturer, but it's also important to note that Waymo got to market earlier — hitting the stage Tesla is in back in 2021 in San Francisco — and Tesla appears to be giving its engineering team time to get things right.
What's being done about Waymo's growth?
Musk and Tesla are betting big on their self-driving services, despite having a lot of ground to make up in the coming months and years.
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Absolutely 👍 "Tesla is by far the best in the world at real-world AI," Musk said on its results call last week. "A clear proof point for that would be if you compare it to Waymo. Waymo's car is best with God knows how many sensors. Isn't Google good at AI? Yes. But they are not good at real-world AI. Tesla is much better than Google. By far."
Despite Musk's confidence, it's clear Waymo has quite the head start, and that lead appears to be growing as it expands into new markets.
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