Waymo’s robotaxis are coming back to New York City

Waymo announced today that it intends to launch a fully autonomous robotaxi service in New York City — but first it needs to change state law to permit its vehicles to operate with safety drivers behind the wheel.

The Alphabet-owned company said it has applied for a permit from the city’s Department of Transportation to test its vehicles with safety drivers. If granted, it would be the first permit allowed under the city’s new process for regulating autonomous test vehicles. While it waits, Waymo says next month it will start collecting mapping data with manually driven vehicles in Manhattan.

New York state law requires “that a test vehicle operator be present and ready to assume control of the vehicle while the AV technology is in operation,” according to the city’s AV testing website. Waymo said it is actively lobbying to change the law to allow for autonomous vehicles without safety drivers.

A bill was introduced in the New York State Legislature earlier this year that would permit autonomous vehicles without safety drivers “provided that the automated driving system is engaged and the vehicle meets certain conditions.” The bill is currently under consideration by the state Senate’s transportation committee.

New York City also has some of the most dangerous, congested, and poorly managed streets in the world. They are also full of construction workers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and double- and sometimes even triple-parked cars. In theory, this would make it very difficult for an autonomous vehicle to navigate, given that AVs typically rely on good weather, clear signage, and less aggressive driving from other road users for safe operation. And it’s not clear that the state will amend its laws to allow for fully driverless vehicles, with some lawmakers expressing reservations.

“This kind of testing hasn’t even been completed in other parts of the country,” state Senator John Liu told Daily News last year after the city announced its new permitting process. “It would behoove New York City to wait to see some of those other results of driverless technology in less dense urban settings. This is an example of something where New York City does not have to be first.”

While other states have become hotbeds for AV testing, New York has been a bit of a ghost town. Part of the reason could be the state’s strict rules, which originally required a police escort of autonomous test vehicles — though that language was removed after a renewal of the law several years ago.

In 2017, Cruise announced plans to test its self-driving vehicles in lower Manhattan, but those plans were later scuttled. (Cruise was shut down last year.) Boston-based Optimus Ride tested autonomous shuttles in Brooklyn but only on private roads as part of the borough’s Navy Yard. Mobileye, a division of Intel, also tested a couple of vehicles in the city. And even Waymo briefly gathered mapping data with a small fleet of manually driven vehicles in 2021.

Waymo is currently operating a robotaxi fleet of 1,500 vehicles in four markets: San Francisco and the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. It plans on launching a commercial service in Atlanta later this year, as well as Miami and Washington, DC. The company has said it will add an additional 2,000 vehicles to its fleet through 2026.