Waymo Self Driving Cars Practice on Santa Monica Streets driving into the Driverless Future.

You may have noticed the white SUVs with the rotating lights on the roof, on the streets of Santa Monica. Soon, you will see them driving without drivers.

Waymo's announced that it will also offer a robotaxi service in Los Angeles starting in 2023. So sightings of Waymos on Westside streets are becoming more common. You may even see one without a driver.

I'm always reminded of that scene in Total Recall, the 1998 version with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he ends up a passenger in a Johnny Cab. IN the end he rips the robot off the stock shift and drives himself. He stiffs the robot cabbie of the fare, and the cabbie tries to drive over him. Self-driving cabs through Westside Streets--What could possibly go wrong?

Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an autonomous driving technology company headquartered Mountain View. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.

Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009, at the company's Google X lab run by co-founder Sergey Brin. The project was renamed Waymo in December 2016 following a corporate restructuring of Google.

Waymo operates commercial self-driving taxi services in Phoenix and San Francisco. In October 2020, the company expanded the service to the public, and it was the only self-driving commercial service that operates without safety backup drivers in the vehicle

Waymo also develops driving technology for use in other vehicles, including delivery vans and Class 8 tractor-trailers for delivery and logistics.The company has raised $5.5 billion in multiple outside funding rounds.

Waymo has partnerships with multiple vehicle manufacturers to integrate Waymo's technology, including with Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Nissan-Renault, Stellantis, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, and Geely.