Waymo’s Self-Driving Vans To Roll Again After COVID-19 Shutdown–But No Robotaxi Rides

Waymo will restart road tests of its fleet of self-driving vans in suburban Phoenix next week, nearly two months after idling them because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but isn’t quite ready to resume robotaxi operations for local riders. 

Initially, just a portion of the Alphabet Inc. company’s hundreds of easy to spot white Chrysler Pacifica minivans, adorned with Waymo’s blue and green logo, will be on the road again from May 11, the company said in a blog post. While human test drivers will be sitting behind the wheel of the robotic vehicles, a restart day for the Waymo One ride service isn’t been set, said spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson.

Waymo will follow safety guidelines from the CDC, Arizona and the city governments where it operates to limit the possibility its test drivers and operations staff could be exposed to the coronavirus. Steps include requiring the use of masks and six feet of social distancing between employees at company facilities; health screening of Arizona staff when they enter Waymo buildings; and more frequent and intense cleaning of vehicles. 

“The first part of our tiered approach to safely resume our operations begins with our test fleet and responsibly progresses to serving Waymo One riders again,” the company said. “We’ll begin driving in other cities in the days and weeks to come, including San Francisco, Detroit and Los Angeles, and the resumption of our driving operations in these locations will similarly be guided by ensuring the safety and health of our team in line with CDC and state and local guidance.”

Waymo was the first company to launch a small-scale, semi-public ride program, starting in late 2018 in Chandler, Arizona. So far it’s deployed about 1,000 vehicles in cities across the U.S. and plans to add tens of thousands more over the next year or two. Waymo One operates much like Uber or Lyft, with a company designed app that lets registered users hail one of its vans anywhere within a 100-square mile section of suburban Phoenix. Fares are comparable to conventional ridehail services. The company also started Waymo Via this year, a separate service for automated trucking and urban deliveries.

In March, just before the shutdown, Waymo raised at least $2.25 billion, tapping investors beyond its parent Alphabet for the first time, to accelerate R&D and enlarge its robotaxi and robotic truck fleets. That funding also made it easier to continue paying staff in Arizona during the extended shutdown. 

While its vehicles weren’t running on public roads, Waymo says its engineers continued hardware and software development work and continued to rack up billions of miles in complex, computer-simulated testing.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus