by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 2:29 PM ET, Wed November 8, 2017
No driver, no problem!
Waymo, the autonomous car unit belonging to Google parent Alphabet Inc., has announced it will soon begin driving people around in minivans without the usual "safety drivers" behind the steering wheel.
The pilot program makes Waymo the first to take such a major step forward with driverless technology, Bloomberg reported.
"We want the experience of traveling with Waymo to be routine, so you want to use our driver for your everyday needs," John Krafcik, Waymo's chief executive officer, said at the Web Summit conference in Portugal. "Fully self-driving cars are here."
Waymo will begin the program in a limited area of Chandler, Arizona (part of metropolitan Phoenix) and will enlist volunteer passengers to start. The cars will be able to drive anywhere within the defined test area, according to TechCrunch. In the future, people will be able to hail the cars using a mobile app in the same manner that passengers hail an Uber or Lyft ride.
If riding in a driverless vehicle sounds a little intimidating, keep in mind that the vans have been driving around with empty front seats for quite some time now on the company's 91-acre test site in central California.
Waymo recently hosted a group of journalists at its Castle testing facility and gave them rides in the vehicles without safety drivers.
In addition, the Alphabet company has accumulated more autonomous test miles on roads than competitors such as Ford Motor Co. and Uber Technologies, according to Bloomberg.
The vehicles, Chrysler minivans, have a graphical interface in the back seat that allows riders to view the driving course, as well as buttons to call customer service or pull the car to the side of the road.
Waymo's announcement, no matter how you look at it, is huge news according to industry watchers.
It means that the company's cars will be sharing public roads with human-driven cars and pedestrians, as TechCrunch noted. There will be no one at the wheel to take over if things don't go as planned.
But the publication also pointed out that the move is not about throwing caution to the wind. Rather, this is a signal that the company is ready to move forward after spending a decade working on this technology and associated concerns.
Waymo's CEO also indicated at the Web Summit that his goal is to eventually expand the trial to cover all of the Phoenix area.
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