Waymo News Updates

The move is a step toward Uber challenging Alphabet’s Waymo, which has also been a partner of the ride-hailer.

Waymo Premier includes priority pickups, 10% cash back on every trip in the form of ride credits, early access to Waymo in new cities and up to five free cancellations per month.

Dubbed the Ojai, the self-driving vehicle will initially be made available to select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. 

Waymo has temporarily halted service in five cities over concerns that its robotaxis may attempt to drive on flooded roads.

Waymo is recalling thousands of robotaxis to fix a software issue that could cause the autonomous vehicles to drive on flooded roads.

Waymo said in a statement that it was “disappointed” by the governor’s decision. “We’re committed to bringing our service to New York and will work with the state Legislature to advance this issue.”

Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous driving unit, will hit more than 1 million paid weekly robotaxi rides in the U.S. by the end of this year, according to co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana.

Alphabet’s Waymo said it is using DeepMind’s Genie 3 AI model to create realistic, digital worlds for its autonomous driving technology to train on edge-case scenarios.

Uber's quarterly results will likely take a back seat to the mounting threat posed by the growing self-driving fleets from prominent rivals like Alphabet's Waymo and Elon Musk's Tesla.

Parent company Alphabet would provide about $13 billion to the robotaxi firm, while the rest would come from others, including new investor Sequoia Capital, Bloomberg reports.