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Waymo moves one step closer to officially launching

By
Richard Morgan
Published Feb. 16, 2018, 10:36 p.m. ET

The race to launch America’s first autonomous ride-hailing service is heating up under the desert sun.

Waymo put the heat on Uber and other rivals last month when it got the approval of Arizona authorities to operate as a Transportation Network Company, or TNC.

Waymo, the self-driving car unit that was spun out of Google, has been testing a driverless ride-hailing service in and around Phoenix since April.

The service is free during the test period. Having a TNC license allows Waymo to start operating as a business.

The state has already granted TNC status to Uber and Lyft, which allows them to license vehicles for hire, said a spokesman for Arizona’s DOT.

A TNC license does not differentiate between human-driven vehicles and autonomous vehicles, the spokesman told The Post.

“As long as they’re registered, have license plates, insured and obey all traffic laws, we treat self-driving vehicles the same as any other vehicle on the road,” he said.

Waymo’s TNC license was first reported by Quartz.

A Waymo spokesperson declined to put a start date on the autonomous service.

Waymo isn’t Arizona’s only self-driving upstart. Uber and General Motors’ Cruise Automation are also conducting tests in the state — a hub for auto experiments given its weather, wide open spaces and lightly regulated environment.

Experts regard Waymo the frontrunner, however, as its more than 4 million test miles are by far the most accumulated by any competitor.

Ruth Porat, the CFO of Google parent Alphabet, assured investors during a Feb. 1 earnings call that Waymo was committed to building on its lead.

“We’re currently driving — self-driving, I should say — 10,000 miles every day with billions of miles in simulation and robust testing at our private facility,” she said.

The Alphabet unit sued Uber in February 2017, claiming the ride-hailing company stole trade secrets through the acquisition of a driverless startup founded by a former Waymo engineer.
Before exiting Waymo, the engineer allegedly downloaded 14,000 confidential files.

The companies settled on Feb. 9 — but not before former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick admitted to intense competition because, as he told the jury, he considers self-driving cars a “winner-take-all” market.