Waymo to expand autonomous vehicle rides to San Francisco

Waymo's self-driving ride-hailing service is branching out to San Francisco. The autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, Google's parent company, said Wednesday that it started carrying employees in electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs without human backup drivers. Previously the company had been testing the vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel just in case. Waymo didn't elaborate on when it might offer autonomous rides to the public in San Francisco. The company has been using autonomous minivans without human backups to carry passengers in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area since 2020.