The company’s presence in San Antonio to test its self-driving car fleet’s AI could be the first step to bringing autonomous cars to town.
SAN ANTONIO — Waymo, a California-based ride share company that uses self-driving cars, says its vehicles will start roaming San Antonio this summer.
But you won’t be able to catch a ride in one. At least not yet.
A Waymo spokesperson says its vehicles will be in town all summer, manned by “trained human autonomous specialists,” as they drive throughout the Alamo City so the company can get familiar with local roads. It’s revving up similar testing in Dallas, Houston, Nashville and Las Vegas this year.
The vehicles were out on Alamo City roadways as of Tuesday.
“These diverse environments will help us further develop our autonomous driving technology as we keep our wheels turning across the Lone Star State,” a Waymo representative said.
But the spokesperson said Waymo isn’t fully joining San Antonio’s network of ride-share services just yet, nor did they provide a timeline of when it could.
City Manager Erik Walsh, however, recently notified city leaders about their presence—and called it “the first step in a multi-step process to move towards autonomous vehicles operating in San Antonio.”
“This initial phase will be focused on areas inside of Loop 410 with some pockets outside of Loop 410,” Walsh told Mayor Ron Nirenberg and other City Council members in his memo.
Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, and its website indicates self-driving cars will be coming to Atlanta and Miami next. In those cities, passengers can use the Uber app to schedule a pickup from one of the fleet’s electric and self-driving Jaguar I-PACE SUVs, which sports an eye-catching camera on its top.
It’s a futuristic-sounding scenario that’s increasingly becoming a common sight in major cities.
The company touts itself as “the world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service.” Texas-based Tesla said earlier this month it plans to launch a robotaxi trial in Austin by the end of June.
Regulation of autonomous vehicles in Texas is up to the state rather than local municipalities, the result of a bill passed by lawmakers in 2017. But, Walsh said in his memo, “San Antonio will work with autonomous vehicle companies as they enter the market to offer staff knowledge on the local transportation network to help AVs operate safely.”
Walsh added he expects Waymo to notify San Antonio leaders if and when it decides to move forward with fully launching ride-hailing operations in the city.
Waymo first launched in Phoenix in 2018. The vehicle have been making their way around Austin since early March, but the very next month a Texas woman claimed she was trapped in a Waymo car along a busy street in the state capital, sharing her experience her TikTok.