Organization: Waymo
Country: United States
State: CA
Website: www.waymo.com
Year Founded: 2009 (formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project)
Number of Employees: 1500+
Innovation Class: Business & Management Innovation
Innovation Subclass: Market Engagement
Fully driverless cars have arrived, albeit in a limited capacity.
Description:
Waymo has made many announcements since Jan. 1, 2019, the oldest date of eligibility for this year’s RBR50 list, including testing and mapping of new locations, new business applications such as delivery and trucking, selling its custom lidar to third-party customers, raising its first external funding round, and much more.
But the most significant announcement came late in 2019, when Waymo started to remove human safety drivers from some of its Chrysler Pacifica minivans, taxiing members of its early rider program around the suburbs of Phoenix. Yes, the program is limited to a geofenced area that Waymo has been testing on since 2017, but it proves that autonomous vehicles are no longer a pipe dream. Fully driverless cars have arrived, albeit in a limited capacity.
Waymo has made many announcements since Jan. 1, 2019, the oldest date of eligibility for this year’s RBR50 list, including testing and mapping of new locations, new business applications such as delivery and trucking, selling its custom lidar to third-party customers, raising its first external funding round, and much more.
But the most significant announcement came late in 2019, when Waymo started to remove human safety drivers from some of its Chrysler Pacifica minivans, taxiing members of its early rider program around the suburbs of Phoenix. Yes, the program is limited to a geofenced area that Waymo has been testing on since 2017, but it proves that autonomous vehicles are no longer a pipe dream. Fully driverless cars have arrived, albeit in a limited capacity.