Topline
New Yorkers have been spotting Waymos—with their distinctive, rotating laser sensors on top—driving across Manhattan as the autonomous vehicle company tests in the nation’s largest city, though they will still have human drivers for the foreseeable future.
A Waymo vehicle in San Francisco. New York state law still requires autonomous vehicles to have a human behind the wheel.
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Key Facts
“We have every intention of bringing our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to the city in the future,” Waymo said in a statement to Forbes, noting these vehicles would be manually operated by drivers as the company waits for the results of a permit application to operate autonomously.
Since announcing an NYC test in June, the company posted a photo of a testing car in July, and New Yorkers in recent days have started capturing images and videos of the white cars equipped with sensors on the streets of Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Long Island City.
Key Background
Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company and Alphabet company, first began offering driverless ridesharing services to all customers in Phoenix in 2020. It has since expanded to multiple cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, where it competes with Tesla’s Robotaxi service—but largely remains the leader in the emerging industry so far. The company previously tested its vehicles in parts of Manhattan in 2021. New York’s iconic yellow cab industry was devastated when rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft moved into the city. Now, New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission’s annual report said there were 178,917 active licensed drivers in 2024, a number that includes both taxi drivers and for-hire vehicle drivers.
Surprising Fact
Although Waymo applied for a permit to operate autonomous vehicles, New York state law requires these vehicles to have a person present in the driver’s seat at all times. Waymo told Forbes it was lobbying to change this regulation.
