Enlarge / A Cruise robotaxi test vehicle in San Francisco. (credit: Cruise)

The autonomous vehicle developers Cruise and Waymo both got a little closer to running true driverless robotaxi services in and around San Francisco. In May, both Waymo and Cruise applied to the California Department of Motor Vehicles for deployment permits (as opposed to the testing permits that have allowed non-commercial operations). On Thursday, the DMV issued autonomous deployment permits to both companies, which is a necessary step if the robotaxis are to charge passengers for their rides.

San Franciscans might have to be night owls to catch a Cruise; the DMV's authorization gives Cruise permission to operate on surface streets within a geofenced area of San Francisco between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am. Cruise's autonomous vehicles are allowed to operate in light rain and light fog, but they aren't allowed to exceed 30 mph (48 km/h).

Waymo is allowed to operate over a wider area; the DMV's authorization is "within parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties." These robotaxis are also trusted to cope with light rain and light fog and are approved for speeds of up to 65 mph (105 km/h).

Enlarge / One of Waymo's sensor-studded Jaguar I-Paces observes a pedestrian crossing the road in front of it. (credit: Waymo)

The day when robotaxis roam the streets of San Francisco looking for fare-paying customers is getting closer. This week, Reuters reported that both Waymo and Cruise have applied to California's Department of Motor Vehicles for permits to deploy driverless vehicles . The permit on its own isn't sufficient to begin operating a commercial robotaxi service, but it is an important milestone on the way to achieving that.

For several months now , Waymo has operated a fully driverless commercial taxi service in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. But as Ars alum Tim Lee wrote recently, " Suburban Phoenix is a terrible place to run a taxi service ."

A sun-blessed suburb in the Southwest, designed with the car in mind as the primary mode of transport, is as close to easy mode for an autonomous vehicle as it's possible to get, outside the confines of private test tracks or a gigantic retirement village . That in turn means that the Phoenix suburbs have limited value when it comes to teaching an autonomous vehicle how to cope with the big bad world. And since having a car is virtually a prerequisite for living in a suburb like Chandler, the people who live there don't need to use taxis often.

Enlarge / Waymo CEO John Krafcik speaks in 2018. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Many Tesla fans view the electric carmaker as a world leader in self-driving technology. CEO Elon Musk himself has repeatedly claimed that the company is less than two years away from perfecting fully self-driving technology.

But in an interview with Germany's Manager magazine, Waymo CEO John Krafcik dismissed Tesla as a Waymo competitor and argued that Tesla's current strategy was unlikely to ever produce a fully self-driving system.

"For us, Tesla is not a competitor at all," Krafcik said. "We manufacture a completely autonomous driving system. Tesla is an automaker that is developing a really good driver assistance system."

Enlarge (credit: Cruise)

Cruise, the self-driving company that counts Honda and GM as major shareholders, has begun testing self-driving Chevy Bolts with no one in the driver's seat, the company announced on Wednesday. A safety operator in the passenger seat has the ability to stop the car in an emergency but not "traditional driver controls," according to the company. The car will also be monitored remotely.

Cruise has been testing its self-driving cars for more than 2 million miles. But like other companies with advanced self-driving technologies, Cruise has to decide when and how to make the leap from testing prototypes to releasing a commercial product. Launching a product before it's ready could get someone killed.

Cruise's leading competitor, Alphabet-owned Waymo, launched a self-driving taxi service in the Phoenix suburbs in 2017. Initially, Waymo had safety drivers behind the wheel and its hand-picked passengers were all under nondisclosure agreements. It wasn't until October 2020—more than three years later—that Waymo finally began offering fully driverless rides to the general public with no NDA.

Enlarge / Joel Johnson with a driverless Waymo vehicle. (credit: Joel Johnson)

Waymo has long kept details about its industry-leading self-driving technology under wraps. The company has done millions of miles of testing in Arizona and California—including thousands of driverless miles with no one behind the wheel. But until last month, almost everyone who experienced those driverless rides was bound by a strict non-disclosure agreement.

In October, Waymo finally pulled back the curtain on its driverless technology. Today customers near the Phoenix suburb of Chandler can hail a fully driverless taxi. They can record rides, publish videos, and talk to reporters about their experiences.

One young Arizonan in particular has leapt at the chance to document the real-world performance of Waymo's driverless taxis. Joel Johnson is an Arizona State University student who is taking a break from college during the pandemic. He lives near Waymo's service territory and has been using some of his free time to put Waymo's driverless taxis through their paces. He says he has taken more than 60 driverless rides in the two months since Waymo opened driverless service up to the public. He has posted more than a dozen videos .

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After covering Waymo for several years, I've learned to take the company's announcements with a grain of salt.

In 2018, for example, Waymo said it would launch a fully driverless commercial service by the end of the year. Waymo did release a service called Waymo One in December 2018, but it came with a couple of huge asterisks : every vehicle had a safety driver, and the service was only open to a small group of people.

But today Waymo finally seems to be launching the taxi service it promised two years ago: one that's fully driverless and open to the public. Waymo tells Ars that the service will initially operate in a 50-square-mile area in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler, Tempe, and Mesa.

Enlarge (credit: Waymo )

Until now, Waymo (formerly the Google self-driving car project) has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet. While the company enjoyed a limited amount of autonomy, CEO John Krafcik still ultimately reported to Alphabet brass. Waymo has never published its own financial results, but it's widely believed that Alphabet has absorbed billions of dollars of losses as Waymo has refined its technology.

Now Alphabet won't have to bear the financial burden alone. Waymo says that for the first time it has raised funding from outside investors. The total fundraising round is $2.25 billion—though some of that money is coming from parent company Alphabet. Other investors include Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Waymo is following in the footsteps of two of its biggest rivals—GM's Cruise and Ford's Argo. Cruise has raised more than $3 billion in three rounds from Softbank, T. Rowe Price, Honda, and parent company GM. The Honda investment has helped cement an alliance that could lead to Honda adopting Cruise's self-driving technology for its own vehicles.