Waymo has announced plans to sideline its work on autonomous trucking operations to increase its focus on the ride-hailing industry.
The Waymo Driver has been designed to integrate with multiple vehicle platforms, including ride-hailing, trucking, local delivery services and personal cars.
However, due to the momentum and commercial opportunities surrounding the ride-hailing industry, the company has now decided to focus its efforts and investment in this sector.
Indeed, Waymo currently reports that it is seeing significant business growth and rider demand in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Most recently, it announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Uber to make the autonomous Waymo Driver available on the Uber platform.
This focus will see Waymo push back the timeline for its commercial and operational efforts on trucking, which has involved partnerships with companies such as UPS and Uber Freight.
Despite this, the company will continue its collaboration with Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) to advance the technical development of an autonomous truck platform.
This will involve following through with investments to create a chassis to facilitate autonomous trucking and bringing together Waymo’s autonomous technology with DTNA’s autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia® platform.
These endeavours aim to improve road safety and efficiency for fleet customers.
