Waymo announced plans Wednesday to bring its autonomous cars to New York City streets starting next month, but in a change from its robotaxi service in other states, the company said it plans to have a person behind the steering wheel to meet local regulations.
Waymo needs a permit to operate its robotaxis even with supervision, under guidelines Mayor Eric Adams announced last year. Waymo said Wednesday that it had applied for the permit with the city’s Transportation Department and, in the meantime, would start manually driving in the city.
Waymo, a spinoff of Google, also said it wants to change state law in New York to allow for operating a vehicle with no human behind the wheel, as Waymo operates now in cities including Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. New York law mandates at least one hand on the steering wheel for any vehicle in operation.
The mayor’s office said in a statement that the New York City Transportation Department was reviewing Waymo’s application.
“As we have said, New York City leads the nation in responsible innovation, and our autonomous vehicle program is no different. Public safety is our first priority, which is why we have strong guardrails and requirements in place on any sort of autonomous vehicles to ensure that we get AV technology right,” the mayor’s office said.
Waymo is the first autonomous vehicle technology company to apply for such a permit, the mayor’s office said.
The company said it wasn’t ready to expand to New York City in the way that it’s expanding to other cities this year such as Atlanta and Miami, but that it wants to do so one day.
“This is not an expansion, but we have every intention of bringing our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to the city in the future,” Waymo said in a statement.
Waymo’s intention to have a visible presence in New York City, the nation’s largest city, comes at a crucial time for robotaxis, with the Trump administration loosening some regulations and Elon Musk’s Tesla planning to start a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in the coming days.
Autonomous vehicle technology has met vocal opposition in New York and elsewhere from organized labor out of concern that it could eliminate work for thousands of drivers, not only for those who drive taxis but eventually for others including truck drivers.