Driving ourselves places could soon be a quirky “back in my day” story we tell our grandkids.
Driving the news: Robo-taxi operator Waymo will begin testing its autonomous vehicles across Toronto this week, with plans to launch its ride-hailing service in the city by 2028. If the rollout goes to plan, it would be the first robo-taxi service to operate in Canada.
First, Waymo will need to map the city’s streets with a human driver behind the wheel. The Google-owned company also said it would hire hundreds of people in Toronto to do this, ranging from test drivers to maintenance workers.
Waymo, which is now operating in more than 15 cities globally, has seen its weekly ridership double to 500,000 in the past year.
Why it matters: While Waymo is not without its critics (and has experienced some high-profile blunders), it claims that the upside of autonomous ride-hailing far outweighs any negatives — mainly for safety reasons. The company says its cars are 95% less likely than human drivers to be involved in a crash causing a serious injury or worse. Another study by a Swiss insurance firm found Waymos had 92% fewer bodily injury claims than human driven vehicles.
There’s also the promise of lower prices for consumers as the robo-taxis become cheaper to build and operate. Waymo rides are still more expensive than on Uber or Lyft right now, but the price gap is shrinking quickly.
Yes, but: Ontario might’ve given Waymo the green light to start testing, but the path to actually offer paid rides is still unclear. The province doesn’t currently have any policy framework around autonomous vehicles beyond temporary pilot tests, and would need to create one from scratch by 2028. And given the potential job displacement and growing hostility towards giant tech companies, that could be an uphill political fight.
