Waymo taps the brakes on its autonomous-trucking project

Six years after launching its autonomous-truck program, Waymo has stated it’s determined to focus extra on creating its ridesharing ambitions utilizing its self-driving vehicles and minivans.

The California-based, Alphabet-owned firm stated its resolution to successfully put autonomous trucking on the again burner is all the way down to the “super momentum and substantial business alternative” that it’s seeing with the pilot ridesharing service it launched in Arizona in 2018 earlier than taking it to a number of different states. Prospects concerned in this system can use an app to name a Waymo driverless automobile in the identical means they’d e-book an Uber.

“With our resolution to deal with ride-hailing, we’ll push again the timeline on our business and operational efforts on trucking, in addition to most of our technical growth on that enterprise unit,” Waymo co-CEOS Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov stated in a blog post shared on Wednesday.

Waymo will proceed its partnership with Daimler Truck North America with the intention of advancing the technical growth of an autonomous truck platform, the pair confirmed.

The corporate is continuous to work on creating Waymo Driver — the autonomous software program and {hardware} that powers the Waymo automobiles — with enhancements carried throughout to its pared-down trucking efforts.

Waymo started assessments of its hands-free Class 8 big rig in Arizona in 2017 earlier than persevering with trials in Atlanta, Georgia, the next 12 months. Its collaboration with Daimler began in 2020.

Mawakana and Dolgov stated that whereas they see a “vital future business alternative” for its trucking resolution, it at the moment sees extra worth in “laser-focusing on ride-hailing.”

Whereas it hopes to make a go of ridesharing with a widespread business launch of such a service, regulators nonetheless have to be satisfied of the protection of the automobiles and of their means to competently deal with a variety of eventualities on public roads.

As for the way forward for self-driving vans, whereas driverless-vehicle chief Waymo could also be easing off, a slew of different corporations — Volvo, TuSimple, and Mitsui amongst them — are persevering with to work on bringing autonomous expertise to the bigger automobiles.

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