Topline<\/p>\n
Waymo secured a permit from New York City on Friday to test its autonomous vehicles on the city\u2019s streets, days after New Yorkers reported spotting some of Waymo\u2019s distinctive cars driving around Manhattan, though the vehicles had human drivers.<\/p>\n
A Waymo vehicle in San Francisco. New York state law still requires autonomous vehicles to have a human behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
Getty ImagesKey Facts<\/p>\n
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced<\/a> the city\u2019s Department of Transportation gave Waymo a permit Friday to test up to eight autonomous vehicles in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn through late September.<\/p>\n During the testing period, a trained autonomous vehicle safety specialist must be sitting in the driver\u2019s seat at all times, according to Adams\u2019 statement. <\/p>\n Waymo told TechCrunch it plans to start testing its autonomuos vehicles \u201cimmediately\u201d (Forbes has reached out to Waymo for comment).<\/p>\n Waymo will be able to apply for an extension to its testing period once it expires.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, New Yorkers reported seeing Waymo vehicles around Manhattan, though Waymo said in a statement to Forbes these vehicles would be manually powered by drivers until it secured the permit for its vehicles to drive autonomously.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement the department has implemented \u201ccomprehensive safety guidelines to ensure safe, responsible testing on our city\u2019s streets.\u201d<\/p>\n Key Background<\/p>\n Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company and Alphabet company, first began offering driverless ridesharing services to all customers in Phoenix in 2020<\/a>. It has since expanded to multiple cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, where it competes with Tesla\u2019s Robotaxi service\u2014but largely remains the leader in the emerging industry<\/a> so far. The company previously tested<\/a> its vehicles in parts of Manhattan in 2021. New York\u2019s iconic yellow cab industry was devastated<\/a> when rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft moved into the city. Now, New York City\u2019s Taxi and Limousine Commission\u2019s annual report<\/a> said there were 178,917 active licensed drivers in 2024, a number that includes both taxi drivers and for-hire vehicle drivers.<\/p>\n Surprising Fact<\/p>\n Although Waymo applied for a permit to operate autonomous vehicles, New York state law requires these vehicles to have a person present in the driver\u2019s seat at all times. Waymo told Forbes it was lobbying to change this regulation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline Waymo secured a permit from New York City on Friday to test its autonomous vehicles on the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":167237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,10414,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,96069,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,17228],"class_list":{"0":"post-167236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-autonomous-vehicles","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-ridesharing","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa","23":"tag-waymo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115074049773602544","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}