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33-year-old Vincent Maurice Jones entered a Waymo Jaguar sedan that had just dropped off another passenger on Main Street, just north of 1st Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Officers say Jones got into the driver’s seat and tried to manipulate the system to put the vehicle into drive. A Waymo employee spoke with Jones through the car’s communication system and instructed him to leave the vehicle. When Jones didn’t follow the employee’s request, the representative contacted LAPD. Officers arrived on the scene a short time and placed Jones under arrest for attempted grand theft auto.

A crowd in San Francisco's Chinatown surrounded a Waymo robotaxi on Saturday night, broke the windows and threw fireworks inside, setting the vehicle ablaze, the company said.

Waymo is tapping the brakes on self-driving trucks and shifting most of its capital, resources and talent to one commercial bet: ride-hailing. The move, which was announced Wednesday in a company blog post, comes six years after Waymo first tested its autonomous vehicle system in Class 8 trucks. The company emphasized the decision was driven by the commercial opportunities in applying its autonomous vehicle technology to ride-hailing. Robotaxis (or ride-hailing using driverless vehicles) have always been a centerpiece of Waymo’s plans. However, many AV developers pivoted to logistics and delivery because it was viewed as the better nearer-term economic bet....

A self-driving car went rogue in Arizona, stalling, then speeding off before assistance could arrive. A YouTuber caught the nearly 20-minute episode on video from the backseat of the car.... ...About 12 minutes into the ride, the car attempted to turn into a lane that had been blocked off with construction cones. Mid-turn it stopped and the rider called an online tech for help...before roadside assistance could get there the car sped off only to stop in the middle of the road, forcing the cars behind it to go into oncoming traffic in order to pass the vehicle. The situation...

Waymo’s fully driverless vehicles are doing passenger trips in the suburbs outside Phoenix, Arizona. We got to experience it first hand, and our ride included a close brush with a construction site, a wrong turn, and a flock of pigeons. But more importantly, it got us thinking about what it means when Waymo says the future is driverless, and what we lose when we eliminate human driving. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__EoOvVkEMo Link to article: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21000085/waymo-fully-driverless-car-self-driving-ride-hail-service-phoenix-arizona

Waymo on Wednesday launched a commercial robot ride-hailing service in Arizona called Waymo One. Like Uber or Lyft, customers will summon a ride with a smartphone app. But in this case, the car will be driving itself. Only “a few hundred customers” will have access to the app and participate in the early stages. Although the cars will drive themselves, a Waymo engineer will sit behind the wheel in case anything goes wrong. Waymo did not say when the cars will start arriving without a human minder or when the program will be expanded. Waymo’s cars, Chrysler Pacifica minivans bristling...

“We’ve tailored our partnerships to meet the top rider needs; in fact, the partnerships below represent eight of the top ten activities our riders do when they get in a Waymo,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the partnerships. Here are the company specific rides Waymo will be providing customers: Walmart: Customers will be offered savings to place orders for groceries on Walmart.com. As the orders are being prepared at a local store in the Phoenix area, Waymo vehicles will transport customers to and from Walmart to pick up their groceries. AutoNation: As customers are having vehicles serviced...

MESA, Ariz. - Police in a Phoenix suburb say a self-driving Waymo vehicle was among five cars involved in a collision, but no serious injuries were reported.

John covered this story last night, but the death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Arizona should have ramifications for the entire idea of autonomous vehicles. (Something I’ve been concerned about for a couple of years now.) After covering the initial reports from the accident, John concluded with the following observations and questions. There will be an investigation of this accident as well, but my first thought is to wonder why the human ‘backup driver’ didn’t stop the car and prevent this. Reliable self-driving cars and trucks may still be a couple years away but it’s...

Waymo recently hosted a number of journalists at its private Castle testing compound, and treated us to rides with no safety driver behind the wheel – now, the former Google self-driving car company is going farther still, however, launching public road tests of its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans with no safety driver on board. The tests aren’t limited to one or two routes, either; the test area where the truly driverless trials are being conducted is in Chandler, Arizona (part of the greater Phoenix metro area), and the cars are able to go anywhere within this defined space. It’s hard...

A self-driving car is not a self-driving car is not a self-driving car. That is the message Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, tried to send on Monday, when it invited a group of reporters to visit Castle, a facility in California’s Central Valley that it has been using as a training course for its self-driving vehicles. Castle, which is built on a decommissioned Air Force base roughly 120 miles from San Francisco, resembles a miniature city, with many of the realistic elements a self-driving car might encounter on the road — like cul-de-sacs, traffic signals...