Alphabet’s Waymo is exploring the possibility of offering its self-driving taxis for personal ownership in the future, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed on Thursday.
Pichai’s comments come as Tesla prepares to launch its own robotaxi service in the U.S. this year. Waymo, which started as a small self-driving initiative within Google in 2009, has grown steadily despite the challenges in the autonomous vehicle sector, including high investment costs, strict regulations, and technical difficulties.
Waymo currently operates a fleet of over 700 vehicles, with 300 of them running in San Francisco, and is the only U.S. company providing fully autonomous robotaxis that charge fares. However, Pichai did not elaborate on when or how Waymo might offer its vehicles for personal ownership, stating only that “there is future optionality for personal ownership.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently highlighted the price disparity between Waymo’s vehicles, which use a combination of cameras and lidar sensors, and Tesla’s vehicles, which rely on camera vision and artificial intelligence. Musk emphasized that Tesla’s robotaxis are much more affordable, estimating that a Tesla costs only about a quarter of what a Waymo vehicle does.
Tesla plans to launch a paid robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, by June, despite experts raising concerns about the challenges of handling difficult driving scenarios such as weather conditions and pedestrian behavior.
While Tesla aims to place the liability for accidents squarely on the owners of its robotaxis, Waymo has focused on building partnerships with companies like Uber, Moove, Hyundai, Zeekr, and Jaguar. These partnerships suggest that Waymo could potentially offer personal ownership through collaborative models rather than manufacturing its own vehicles.
Waymo’s business continues to grow, with more than 250,000 fully autonomous paid rides per week across cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin, with plans to expand to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C.
Pichai’s remarks on Waymo came during Alphabet’s post-earnings conference call, where he also joked that it was the first time he had received a question about Waymo during an earnings call, a sign of the company’s growing progress in the self-driving vehicle market.
