By Paresh Dave and Hyunjoo Jin
(Reuters) – Waymo has given hundreds of people robotaxi rides since its test rollout in San Francisco in August, with tens of thousands more residents on a waitlist, the Alphabet Inc company’s co-chief executive said on Friday at the Reuters Next conference.
Waymo in August started giving autonomous rides to a limited number of people in San Francisco with safety drivers using its Jaguar electric vehicles.
Waymo has deliberately selected diverse testers, Tekedra Mawakana said, to ensure feedback is representative of the broader population. For instance, half of its San Francisco riders are women.
“In San Francisco, we were very focused on making sure that there was gender diversity because safety and transportation is such an issue. Not only safety on the roads, but also physical safety,” she said.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave and Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Nick Zieminski)
