You Can Now Hail A Driverless Robot Taxi In Phoenix

Anyone with the Waymo app in the Phoenix area can now take a ride in a driverless vehicle.

Waymo, Google's self-driving car company, launched the robot taxi service on Thursday. The company started testing its white Chrysler mini vans in 2017 and offering rides to beta testing users in 2018, but now the service is open to the general public.

A few of Waymo's vans will have a human behind the wheel for now, but the company expects to go 100% driverless in the future.

"We expect our new fully driverless service to be very popular, and we’re thankful to our riders for their patience as we ramp up availability to serve demand," CEO John Krafcik wrote in a blog post.

Even without a driver, rides won't be entirely private, according to The Verge. Waymo employees will be able to the watch real-time feeds from eight cameras on the vehicle. The company insists that employees won't be able to take over the vans and the on-board system will do all of the driving.

With the ongoing pandemic, Waymo says that it'll inspect vans between rides and they'll be sanitized multiple times a day. The van's HVAC system is also supposed to refresh the air inside of the van.

Right now, rides are limited to a 50-square mile area in Phoenix, but the company plans to expand to a 100-square mile area in the coming weeks.

Photo: Getty Images