{"id":76975,"date":"2018-03-17T10:02:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T17:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/real-people-are-now-hailing-waymos-robotic-taxis-without-a-driver-in-sight"},"modified":"2018-03-17T10:02:53","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T17:02:53","slug":"real-people-are-now-hailing-waymos-robotic-taxis-without-a-driver-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/real-people-are-now-hailing-waymos-robotic-taxis-without-a-driver-in-sight","title":{"rendered":"Real people are now hailing Waymo\u2019s robotic taxis, without a driver in sight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/real-people-are-now-hailing-waymos-robotic-taxis-without-a-driver-in-sight.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The future arrived, and it\u2019s a minivan. Waymo\u2019s fleet of totally driverless cars in Phoenix, Arizona, now lets members of the public hail a ride around the suburbs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The news:<\/strong> Waymo\u2019s CEO, John Krafick, <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2018\/03\/13\/waymo-driverless-minivans-phoenix\/\">announced at SXSW in Austin, Texas<\/a>, that the firm is offering trips to so-called \u201cearly riders\u201d\u2014the first people to have signed up to use its robotic Chrysler Pacifica taxis. The minivans don\u2019t have a safety driver behind the wheel, but someone can take control remotely if necessary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters:<\/strong> The cars have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/the-download\/609279\/waymos-safety-drivers-are-taking-a-back-seat\/\">in testing without a safety driver<\/a> for a few months. But this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/the-download\/609362\/waymo-will-be-first-to-test-robo-taxis-without-safety-drivers-on-regular\/\">long-awaited<\/a> advance is the first time people have been able to simply hail a totally driver-free ride using an app, as they would an Uber. It\u2019s a big moment for a firm that hopes to turn its autonomy tech into a viable business by offering driverless rides.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/the-download\/610519\/real-people-are-now-hailing-waymos-robotic-taxis\/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-03-17&utm_campaign=Technology+Review\">https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/the-download\/610519\/real-pe...ogy+Review<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The future arrived, and it\u2019s a minivan. Waymo\u2019s fleet of totally driverless cars in Phoenix, Arizona, now lets members of the public hail a ride around the suburbs. The news: Waymo\u2019s CEO, John Krafick, announced at SXSW in Austin, Texas, that the firm is offering trips to so-called \u201cearly riders\u201d\u2014the first people to have signed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,6,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-robotics-ai","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}