Waymo's Robotaxi Service Is Now Available To Thousands In San Francisco

Waymo is significantly expanding its robotaxi service in San Francisco. According to The Verge, the company's driverless ridehail operations will now be available to tens of thousands of people across 47 square miles of the city. From the report: To be sure, Waymo's service isn't yet available to anyone who downloads the Waymo app and wants to ride. The Alphabet-owned company is in the process of onboarding riders from its waitlist, which it expects to complete in short order. "This territory expansion applies to those riders who currently have access to our service and all those to be added from the waitlist in the near future," Waymo spokesperson Christopher Bonelli said in an email. "We are still seeing very strong demand, so we want to scale responsibly to maintain service quality and good user experience." Growing the number of people who want to pay Waymo for trips is incredibly important for the company, which spent at least $1.1 billion on autonomous vehicles between 2009 and 2015 -- a figure that has assuredly grown exponentially in the proceeding years. Waymo will need to increase its revenue significantly if it hopes to turn autonomous vehicles into the profitable business that tech prognosticators have been promising for years. [The company needs more paying customers as it seeks to increase revenue so it can afford to expand to new cities like Los Angeles.]

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