Waymo said Wednesday it has applied for a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City, the Alphabet company’s first step in a sticky regulatory process to bring its robotaxis to U.S.’s largest city.
Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate its self-driving Jaguar I-Pace vehicles with a human safety operator behind the wheel in Manhattan. New York’s autonomous vehicle demonstration or testing permit requires a human driver to be able to take over; a $5 million insurance policy; and every test vehicle operator must be adequately trained in the safe operation of the test vehicle.
New York law is especially prohibitive of autonomous vehicles. While securing a permit would be notable, Waymo is far from being able to launch commercial operations in the city — or even test without a human safety operator behind the wheel.
Still, Waymo is pressing forward and said it’s advocating for a change in state law that would allow for operating a vehicle with no human behind the wheel. The company is also trying to build goodwill in NYC and the state by working with several organizations such as MADD NY, YAI, National Federation of the Blind, and the Bronx Community College.
Waymo told TechCrunch it has had positive conversations with lawmakers this year and hopes to keep making progress on regulatory changes. New York law states that any person operating a motor vehicle must have at least one hand (or prosthetic) on the steering mechanism at all times. Changing that wording will be key to Waymo eventually being able to deploy driverless vehicles.
Other companies have tried to test in NYC before, including Mobileye and the now shuttered Cruise. But these efforts never materialized beyond a few demonstrations or pilots.
Of course, New York City has other challenges beyond regulations. The city is chock-a-block with cars, trucks, delivery vans, bicycles, buses, and, importantly, people, all of whom are scuttling about. San Francisco, one of the markets that Waymo operates in today, is also a bustling city with many of the same challenges. NYC takes that complexity to a factor of 10.
Waymo has eyed the massive market of NYC for years. In 2021, the company deployed its now retired Chrysler Pacifica minivans — the first self-driving vehicles in its testing fleet — to manually drive and map Manhattan. The company said at the time that each vehicle would have two people, one to drive and another in the passenger seat to help direct the activity of the driver, monitor the software on the vehicle in real time, evaluate the performance, and log comments.
Those vehicles were never operated in autonomous mode even though they were all equipped with fifth-generation Waymo Driver, which was its most current and advanced self-driving system at the time.
Over the past four years, Waymo has scaled in numerous other places. The company provides more than 250,000 fully autonomous paid trips each week in several U.S. markets, including Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.
