00:00 Brian Sozzi
Well, Waymo is doing what was once unthinkable, bringing its robo taxi service to the streets of New York City. Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian here with more details in the story. I I mean, just personally, I can’t wait to get in a Waymo and take it around the city. So is it how quickly is this happening? What’s the steps, what are the steps that have to happen?
00:16 Pras Subramanian
So, you’re saying they apply for a permit to begin tests next month. Now, there’ll be a safety driver in the driver seat, so you’re not going to be alone in the car, but it should ostensibly drive on its own, like it has in LA, San Francisco, Austin right now. Uh, it should be I mean, I’m I was surprised to hear that they’re going to be doing this this soon. I think it’s kind of shows you how far the technology’s come and how confident they are that they can come to New York City where you have cyclists and pedestrians and just people and you know, bikes everywhere. It’s just a kind of a wild scene to think about. But yeah, it’s coming here next month and it kind of speaks to their global or their continue expansion, uh more places in LA, more places in San Francisco. So, yeah, this is the next big step for them.
00:48 Brian Sozzi
Do we have any line of sight, by the way, I’m just curious, what regulators would have to see, Pras, to get comfortable getting that human out of the car, going full robot?
00:56 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, I’m not sure. I believe it’s it’s that New York does not allow a car to be operated without a driver in the seat. I think it’ll kind of maybe show a decent record of safety that’ll allow them to change regulations to allow full robo taxi deployment, or as they call unsupervised, uh in in New York. You know, so, as Waymo does this in New York City, Tesla is beginning their robo taxi tests in Austin, but unsupervised, meaning there will be no safety driver in the driver’s seat. There’ll be a person sitting in the passenger seat and tell operators in case anything needs to be done. So, it’s a little bit of a distinction there. A little uh a little odd kind of change, because think about Tesla hasn’t proven anything yet from a robo taxi point of view. Where Waymo is being extra careful, uh with that right now.
01:33 Brian Sozzi
So you’ll get in the car in for the Tesla and somebody will be in the passenger seat already.
01:39 Pras Subramanian
In this small test they’re doing, yeah.
01:42 Brian Sozzi
Interesting. Wasn’t there other autonomous tech news today, a Volkswagen backed company?
01:48 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, earlier today Volkswagen, uh has this startup called Mio, I think they’re called. And basically they came up with this uh, you’re looking at it, it’s an ID version of their ID Buzz minivan, electric minivan, but but fit for robo taxi use using using um uh different software suite plus sensors, uh plus a sort of bespoke mobility platform that allow operators to buy these vans in bulk and and then then deploy them as robo taxis and Uber will be their partner initially for some parts of the US. So, yeah, this is an interesting concept here. Or it’s an actual vehicle that VW is using right now in Hamburg, Germany. And they want to bring it around to the US too.
02:24 Brian Sozzi
I like the the paint job on the outside of this. Pras, thank you.
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