Waymo has begun to open up its robotaxi service to the public in Las Vegas, just weeks after the Alphabet-owned company received final approval from the Nevada Transportation Authority (NTA), according to TechCrunch.
The company said Monday that it would follow the same approach in Las Vegas that it had used during the robotaxi launch in 14 other cities.
The company is starting service with “dozens” of its new Ojai minivan robotaxis. The self-driving ride service won’t be available throughout Las Vegas, but the company will expand the number of vehicles and service area over time.
Waymo is in competition with Tesla, Zoox, and other market rivals. But the announcement comes as the self-driving tech company is growing operations across the US and Europe. The company said last month it would begin testing its self-driving cars in the German capital, Munich.
In early September, Waymo started to expand its robotaxi service to invited members (on a rolling basis) of the public in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa. The company is operating the Waymo Ojai models in both Denver and San Diego, while in Tampa, it is using a combination of Waymo Ojai and Jaguar I-PACE cars.
Las Vegas is Waymo’s 15th market, but rivals such as Elon Musk’s Tesla and American autonomous-vehicle company Motional are also eyeing the city for launching commercial robotaxi services. Zoox, an autonomous vehicle company owned by Amazon, already has a commercial service in Las Vegas. Waymo also runs its robotaxi service in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with rides available through Uber in Austin.
Waymo, Tesla, and Uber have received approval from the NTA to operate commercial robotaxi services in Clark County, Las Vegas. The NTA approval allows Waymo to operate up to 1,000 self-driving vehicles over the next year, Tesla up to 5,000, and Uber up to 1,000 robotaxi vehicles.
However, Uber will operate the robotaxi service through partnerships with Hyundai subsidiaries Motional and Zoox.
