Self-driving cars are officially coming to New York City

Waymo has the green light to start testing its self-driving cars in New York City. 

Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday that the city has granted Waymo a permit to start testing a small fleet of autonomous vehicles on the streets of New York. The pilot program will be limited to some of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn and will put eight approved autonomous vehicles into action for testing. 

The cars might drive themselves but an “AV specialist” will still be behind the wheel during the testing period, which will be in place until late September. After the initial testing phase ends, Waymo can apply for an extension with the city to continue exploring how its self-driving cars fare in some of the country’s most congested, challenging driving conditions. 

“We’re a tech-friendly administration and we’re always looking for innovative ways to safely move our city forward,” Adams said. “New York City is proud to welcome Waymo to test this new technology in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as we know this testing is only the first step in moving our city further into the 21st century.”

New York City DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez assured New Yorkers that the agency has robust safety guidelines in place for the Waymo trial. “These requirements will help ensure that the development of this technology is focused, first and foremost, on the safety of everyone who shares our busy city streets,” Rodriguez said.

Waymo’s permit will only allow the company to test its autonomous driving technology, not operate a robotaxi service that can ferry paying riders around. Unlike in San Francisco, Austin and a handful of other major U.S. cities, robotaxis aren’t yet legal in New York. 

To really open up New York City as a market, Waymo will need to secure a license from the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, which currently prohibits using autonomous vehicles for taxi services. Given the city’s complex, corruption-ridden taxi business and its entrenched power players, overcoming New York’s regulatory hurdles could prove just as challenging as some of the technological problems that Waymo has faced.

Waymo leads the pack

Waymo currently leads the pack in the robotaxi business, but competitors are keen to catch up. By spring of this year, Waymo reported 250,000 paid robotaxi rides each week across the cities where its driverless cars operate. The company is now up and running in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta. 

When Waymo entered the Atlanta market earlier this summer through Uber, some riders eager to try the technology canceled their rides with human drivers while they sifted through the system to hunt down the autonomous vehicles. Waymo’s Atlanta fleet is expected to grow to hundreds of cars within the next few years and the company is steadily pursuing plans to branch into other major cities, with Dallas, Miami and Washington D.C. in the works. 

So far, the competition has struggled to keep up. Amazon-owned Zoox was mired in a federal investigation and red tape, but the company won a regulatory exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier this month. The precedent could help other autonomous vehicle makers get more cars on the road in the U.S. quickly.

Tesla launched its first robotaxi pilot program in Austin in June after a decade of lofty promises about the transformational business of self-driving Teslas. In July, the company launched a ridehailing service in San Francisco, but those rides are supervised by a human in the passenger seat after Tesla failed to secure necessary permits for robotaxi rides.