Starting today, human-averse travelers in Phoenix can book a fully autonomous Waymo ride between the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and downtown. The Alphabet-owned company, which is also doubling its fully automated coverage area in the city, says the new route is the world's only fully autonomous airport robotaxi service. Waymo has accelerated its public rollout lately. In March, it received permission to charge for rides with a human safety driver in San Francisco. It also got approval last month to offer fully driverless cars there before rolling out service to the public earlier in December. San Francisco riders can now book a Waymo robotaxi across "a large portion of the city, including every neighborhood along the 17-mile Crosstown Trail."

General Motors autonomous car unit, Cruise, has started to offer driverless rides to residents of San Francisco as it moves toward the launch of a full-fledged robo-taxi service. Following a test run of the service last week, Cruise has released a video (below) showing the reaction of the very first passengers as they rode through the streets of the Californian city in a vehicle that had nobody behind the wheel. With most riders in the video experiencing autonomous trips for the first time, the reactions were understandably upbeat, ranging from, "This is so cool" to "It's just weird," along with comments such as, "The car drove better than most of the drivers I've been in the back of a car with." In a blog post on Tuesday, February 2, Kyle Vogt, Cruise interim CEO and co-founder, announced a new sign-up page for folks interested in taking a free ride through the streets of San Francisco in one of Cruise's autonomous Chevy Bolts. Vogt said the service will begin with a "small number" of users, but it will gradually increase as it deploys more of its driverless cars on public roads.