Waymo News Updates

Gradient Ventures, an early-stage venture fund within Google, is leading a $6 million investment in a new company that’s building software to let humans control cars remotely.

Waymo is teaming up with Jaguar Land Rover on autonomous vehicles, its second major automaker partnership and a big boost for the nascent technology that has come under scrutiny recently.

In a pioneering self-driving car company’s first public comments on the Uber autonomous car accident March 18 that killed an Arizona woman, Waymo CEO John Krafcik said his tech could “handle” that very scenario.

It’s getting to be a traffic jam. Alphabet Inc.’s autonomous vehicle division Waymo began this month operating an autonomous freight truck in the Atlanta area, carrying server equipment, racks and related material to Google data centers.

Waymo will start testing a fleet of autonomous freight trucks in Georgia’s capital that will take deliveries to Google’s data centers.

Waymo, a unit of Alphabet Inc., got a permit in late January from the Arizona Department of Transportation to operate as a Transportation Network Company, according to Ryan Harding, a spokesman at the state agency.

Google’s gravest threat is probably a regulatory crackdown on its lucrative search engine, and there’s a resurgent drumbeat about its size and power in Washington. If the company’s worried, that’s not showing up in its lobbying activity.

It’s a paradox: How can paying a quarter of a billion dollars to a rival and issuing an apology be considered a win?

Uber Technologies Inc. settled the high-stakes trade-secret theft lawsuit brought by Waymo, resolving a conflict that already cost the ride-hailing giant its top driverless car engineer and threatened to further embarrass the company.

Subdued. Calm. Compliant. Agreeable. Those adjectives aren’t typically associated with Travis Kalanick, Uber’s combative co-founder. But during 50 minutes on the witness stand in the Waymo vs. Uber trial on Feb. 6, a suit-and-tie-clad Kalanick kept his cool, meekly agreeing with most questions posed to him by Charles Verhoeven, Waymo’s lead attorney.