Waymo starts to eclipse Uber in race to self-driving taxis

Uber barreled into autonomous driving out of fear that it could end up as the Myspace or Yahoo of ride-hailing, a company with early gargantuan success that stumbled as times changed. Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has pursued its ambitions more cautiously, accumulating long years of research and testing before pursuing a plan to bring its technology to the public. Now, as Waymo scales up its self-driving taxi service, Uber's fear could be coming to pass. As Uber continues to reel from a fatal self-driving accident in Arizona, Waymo has confidently pushed forward -- landing a deal to build 20,000 self-driving luxury sport utility vehicles with Jaguar Land Rover on top of its plan for thousands of Chrysler hybrid minivans. Within two years, it plans to have thousands of fully autonomous taxis -- with no backup drivers behind the wheel -- on the roads, starting in Phoenix, where it is already giving test rides. The company predicts it will give 1 million robot-taxi rides a day by 2020.