Investing.com -- Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s autonomous driving unit Waymo plans to launch its fully driverless ride-hailing service in Washington, D.C., next year, expanding its presence across major U.S. cities.
The company began relocating vehicles to the capital in January and expects to add more in the coming weeks as it works toward rolling out paid rides in 2025.
"We will also work closely with policymakers to formalize the legal framework needed to operate without a human behind the wheel, as Washington, D.C. does not currently allow for fully autonomous operations," Waymo said on Tuesday.
Waymo One, the company’s commercial driverless ride-hailing platform, is already offering more than 200,000 paid trips each week in cities including San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin.
After completing over 4 million paid rides last year, Waymo plans to extend service to Atlanta, Miami, and then Washington, D.C.
In October, Waymo raised $5.6 billion in a funding round led by parent company Alphabet, as it pushes ahead with expansion despite increased scrutiny from regulators over safety concerns.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation in May following 22 reports of Waymo vehicles engaging in behavior that may have breached traffic laws or acted unpredictably.
Seventeen of those reports involved collisions. NHTSA noted that some incidents "involved collisions with clearly visible objects that a competent driver would be expected to avoid."
Waymo said Tuesday that its vehicles have shown a strong safety record. Drawing from data covering over 50 million miles driven without a human driver, the company said its fleet was involved in “81%, or 154, fewer injury-causing crashes compared to an average human driver.”
The latest move to launch robotaxi services in Washington, D.C., reflects its push to widen its footprint and stay ahead of rivals like Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Elon Musk has said Tesla plans to debut its own robotaxi service in Austin this summer, with California to follow later in the year.
Waymo’s D.C. expansion follows the recent rollout of a limited test fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in the city, which have been operating both manually and in autonomous mode with safety drivers on board.