Google sister company Waymo is shelving the development of self-driving trucks and focusing on robotaxis. One still sees business opportunities for the truck business, Waymo emphasized in a blog entry on Thursday night. But in order to be successful, you now have to focus your resources on one task.
Waymo is currently building robotaxi services in the US cities of Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The car giant General Motors is also active in the first two of these with its robot car subsidiary Cruise. Cruise announced this week that the company’s robotic taxis make more than 10,000 trips a week with passengers and will soon be operating in up to six cities.
Cruise and Waymo have so far pioneered the commercial use of self-driving cars as taxis. But among others, Amazon with its company Zoox wants to get into the business.
Pressure from the stock exchange for more cost discipline
Waymo emphasized that the strategic cooperation with the truck manufacturer Daimler Truck will be continued in North America. Advances in the development of robotic car software would ultimately benefit its use for cargo transport as well.
Waymo had been working on self-driving trucks for several years. At times, the industry has seen freight transportation as the area where autonomous driving can first take root. Among other things, because the vehicles are often on freeways instead of in city traffic and there are not many truck drivers in the USA. But that hasn’t happened so far.
Cruise is currently using converted small electric cars from GM’s Chevy Bolt model and will soon switch to a newly developed robotaxi vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals. Waymo is partnering with Jaguar for its Robotaxi service and would like to license autonomous driving technology to automakers. However, these usually rely on in-house developments or industry suppliers.
Waymo is one of the future bets in the Google parent company Alphabet, which accumulates high losses quarter after quarter – and there is constant pressure from the stock market to enforce more cost discipline.
