Waymo Can Finally Bring Truly Driverless Cars to California

Waymo just became the first company allowed to test fully self-driving cars--the kind with no carbon-based beings behind the wheel--in the state of California. The outfit that started life as Google's self-driving car project has been running driver-free cars in Arizona for almost a year, where the state testing rules are far more lax than in California, and where it plans to launch a commercial robo-taxi service by the end of the year. But securing the right to do the same in its home state is still a milestone, and evidence it can win over even comparatively wary regulators to the way of the robot. To begin, the truly driverless cars will test only at up to 65 mph in the southern Bay Area, in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Palo Alto. The company said it will inform local governments before expanding its tests any further.