Waymo is allowing the general public to hitch a ride in its driverless autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, expanding a service it had been quietly offering to a select group of riders for the past year. The service launches to the general public Thursday. The vehicles, which will have no back-up drivers behind the wheel to take over in sticky situations, will serve an area of 50 square miles. There won't be anyone watching remotely who can take over in an emergency and drive the car. Before the coronavirus struck, which reduced demand for rides, Waymo was providing 1,000 to 2,000 rides in autonomous vehicles per week.

Waymo is launching its first self-driving car service in Phoenix Arizona called Waymo One. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet which is developing autonomous vehicles and related services, has officially expanded its reach and is now making some of its self-driving minivans available for customers of ride-share operator Lyft. The rides are restricted to a small area outside Phoenix, where Waymo has been testing self-driving vehicles and has started its own autonomous ride-share service, Waymo One. Waymo's limited partnership with Lyft is the latest example of the company branching out to work with more companies as it develops autonomous vehicles and services. Earlier this month, Waymo struck a deal with Nissan and Renault to build self-driving vehicles for those automakers.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google's self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology. Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that will include a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction. The service debuting Wednesday marks a significant milestone for Waymo, a company that began as a secretive project within Google in 2009. Since then, its cars have robotically logged more 10 million miles on public roads in 25 cities in California, Arizona, Washington, Michigan and Georgia while getting into only a few accidents -- mostly fender benders. The company is initially operating the new service cautiously, underscoring the challenges still facing its autonomous vehicles as they navigate around vehicles with human drivers that don't always follow the same rules as robots. The service, dubbed Waymo One, at first will only be available to a couple hundred riders, all of whom had already been participating in a free pilot program that began in April 2017.

Google's self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology. Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area that will include a human behind the wheel in case the robotic vehicles malfunction. The service debuting Wednesday marks a significant milestone for Waymo, a company that began as a secretive project within Google in 2009. Since then, its cars have robotically logged more than 10 million miles on public roads in 25 cities in California, Arizona, Washington, Michigan and Georgia while getting into only a few accidents - mostly fender benders. Google's self-driving car spinoff is finally ready to try to profit from its nearly decade-old technology. Waymo is introducing a small-scale ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area.

Many people worry that the development of self-driving technology will put taxi drivers and truck drivers out of work. What often gets missed is that self-driving technology companies are going to create plenty of jobs, too. Most obviously, high-end jobs will spring up for engineers designing the necessary hardware and software. But there are also going to be jobs for workers further down the income spectrum, doing things like taking customer calls, cleaning and repairing cars, and updating the high-definition maps that cars use to move around. The Google spinoff plans to launch a driverless taxi service in the Phoenix area before the end of the year.

Waymo announced today that it's partnering with the Phoenix area's regional public transportation authority, Valley Metro, in order to explore whether self-driving vehicles are an effective way to get people to and from public transportation. Starting in August, Valley Metro employees will be able to hail a Waymo ride via the company's app for their first- and last-mile transit connections. Waymo said in its announcement that as cities grow, "the'last mile' -- how people connect to public transportation efficiently, affordably and safely -- is one of the main challenges communities struggle to solve." With its Valley Metro partnership, Waymo aims to test how autonomous vehicles can help fill those mobility gaps. Following the first phase of the partnership, Waymo will then open up its transportation service to those using Valley Metro's RideChoice service, which provides discounted rides to seniors and people with disabilities.

Uber's new CEO told a New York City crowd that all technology companies, not just Facebook, must start making ethical decisions to minimize problematic impacts their innovations may have in society. Car equipped with Uber's self driving technology. SAN FRANCISCO -- Uber has brought on a former head of the National Transportation Safety Board to conduct a "top-to-bottom" safety review of its self-driving car program, which killed a pedestrian in March. The move comes as clouds of doubt gather over the ride-hailing company's autonomous car initiative, which was rushed into existence a few years ago by ousted CEO Travis Kalanick and has been playing catch-up to the nine-year effort by Alphabet-owned Waymo. Uber announced Monday that it was bringing on board former NTSB chairman Christoper Hart to "advise us on our overall safety culture," said spokesperson Chelsea Kohler.

Waymo is preparing to launch a ride-hailing service akin to Uber's, but with driverless cars. The self-driving carmaker spun out of Google was approved on Jan. 24 to operate as a transportation network company (TNC) in Arizona, the state department of transportation told Quartz. Waymo applied for the permit on Jan. 12. Its application, which was reviewed by Quartz, contained images of the autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans the company is testing in five US states. The application realizes a long-held fear of Uber's: that Waymo intends not just to build driverless cars, but to operate its own ride-hailing business.

Uber Technologies Inc. halted autonomous vehicle tests after one of its cars struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona, in what is likely the first pedestrian fatality involving the technology. The 49-year-old woman, Elaine Herzberg, was crossing the road outside of a crosswalk when the Uber vehicle operating in autonomous mode under the supervision of a human safety driver struck her, according to the Tempe Police Department. After the incident, which happened at 10 p.m. local time on Sunday, she was transferred to a nearby hospital, where she died from her injuries. "Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation," Liliana Duran, a Tempe police spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement. We're thinking of the victim's family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened.

Waymo, the self-driving car company created by Google, is pulling the human backup driver from behind the steering wheel and will test vehicles on public roads with only an employee in the back seat. The company's move -- which started Oct. 19 with an automated Chrysler Pacifica minivan in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Ariz. Waymo -- owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. -- is in a race with other companies such as Delphi, General Motors, Intel, Uber, Apple and Lyft to bring autonomous vehicles to the public. The companies say the robot cars are safer than human drivers because they don't get drowsy, distracted or drunk. Waymo has long stated its intent to skip driver-assist systems and go directly to fully autonomous driving.