Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

Ride-hailing leader Uber on Friday announced it will dispatch robotaxis built by driverless technology pioneer Waymo beginning next year in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta in a deal that deepens the bond between once-bitter rivals.

The U.S. government’s highway safety agency has opened another investigation of automated driving systems, this time into crashes involving Waymo’s self-driving vehicles.

Robotaxis are hitting the streets of Los Angeles.

California regulators have approved an expansion that will allow two rival robotaxi service to operate throughout San Francisco at all hours.

An Associated Press reporter recalls the first time he took a ride in a car without sitting in the driver’s seat.

Self-driving car pioneer Waymo is teaming up with ride-hailing leader Uber in the Phoenix area to transport passengers and deliver food in robotic cars that triggered a bitter technological dispute between the two companies.

Self-driving car pioneer Waymo has announced its robotaxis will be able to carry passengers through most of the Phoenix area for the first time.

As Phoenix gets ready to host the Super Bowl, Mayor Kate Gallego has announced Sky Harbor International Airport will be the world's first airport to offer the self-driving ride-hailing service Waymo.

The self-driving car pioneer that was spun off from Google isn’t allowing a recent wave of executive departures to detour its plans to expand its robotic taxi service.

The executive who steered the transformation of Google’s self-driving car project into a separate company worth billions of dollars is stepping down after more than five years on the job.

PHOENIX – A company called Waymo, part of the Google family, is operating a fleet of 600 driverless ride-share minivans, and the experience is mind-blowing. KPRC 2 Investigates tried the service both with and without a Waymo company chaperone and found it to be both reliable and efficient. Anyone and everyone is welcome to use the service as long as they are in the service territory and have downloaded the free phone app. The KPRC 2 crew visited Waymo during the morning and the Waymo fleet was staffed by professional drivers, who manually piloted the cars on their rideshare trips. One of the main routes where Waymo is deploying its fleet of rigs is on Interstate 45 between Houston and Dallas.

The move announced Wednesday by GM-owned Cruise come two months after the company received California's permission to fully driverless cars in the state. “You’re seeing fully driverless technology out of the (research and development) phase and into the beginning of the journey to being a real commercial product," Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said Wednesday. California regulators also recently approved new rules allowing ride-hailing services to pick up passengers in self-driving cars, but Cruise isn't going down that road yet. Instead, Ammann pledged the company will move cautiously while dispatching up to five fully driverless cars into parts of San Francisco initially. Ammann declined to provide a timeline when asked if Cruise planned to use its driverless cars in ride-hailing service within San Francisco next year.

The vehicles, which will have no back-up drivers behind the wheel to take over in sticky situations, will serve an area of 50 square miles. Before the coronavirus struck, which reduced demand for rides, Waymo was providing 1,000 to 2,000 rides in autonomous vehicles per week. Waymo did not disclose how many fully autonomous vehicles will be available to the public in the Phoenix area. “Even small experiments with fully autonomous vehicles in the real world are important steps forward,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, in an email. After that, Waymo will re-introduce human backup drivers behind the wheel in some of the vehicles so the company can work on expanding its service area.

Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google's parent company Alphabet, announced Monday that it has raised $2.25 billion in its first external round of funding. The investment was led by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates. But company CEO John Krafcik said the investment will enable the company to add key partners and grow its operations. Advocates of self-driving vehicles say the technology will dramatically improve road safety. Its self-driving vehicles have driven more than 20 million miles on public roads.