Waymo is Canada Archivesready to get back to the business of being on the streets of California.
The Alphabet-owned company shut down a public testing program for its self-driving minivans and other vehicles in early March, as the global pandemic started to reshape society in the United States. Now that fleet will reportedly return to the streets of San Francisco on June 8.
That revelation comes from a company email obtained by The Verge, which reported the news on Saturday. The self-driving fleet will apparently be running deliveries for a pair of non-profits: Wendy McNaughton's #DrawTogether, which sets local kids up with art kits; and Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
Waymo confirmed the imminent return to San Francisco in a statement provided to Mashable on Monday.
"Back in March, we decided to suspend our driving operations in response to COVID-19 to ensure the safety of everyone involved in our services and local communities. After careful consideration and active conversations with our teams, partners, and local and state authorities, we’ve begun over the last several weeks to resume our driving operations in Phoenix. Soon San Franciscans will also begin to see some Waymo vehicles back on the road, and we’re proud to provide charitable delivery support to community partners. The health and safety of our team is our number one priority as we begin to drive again in San Francisco."
Deliveries are nothing new for Waymo's autonomous vehicle fleet. The company partnered with UPS back in January, putting the self-driving cabs to work on bringing UPS packages to their final destinations. In an unexpected twist, other companies discovered months later that putting vehicles to work on deliveries allowed them to get around pandemic-imposed bans on non-essential workers.
That's not the route Waymo went with, but even after the company paused testing it kept working behind the scenes. The company put virtual versions of its vehicles to work in testing simulations that had them running 20 millions miles each day.
Live tests have already returned to the streets of Phoenix, Ariz., and it appears that California is next. But the reported June 8 return-to-service is framed as package deliveries in partnership with a pair of non-profits.
SEE ALSO: Tesla’s FSD is getting pricier, but Musk says it be might be worth 15 times moreThere's certainly something to the idea of trusting a non-human driver that can't possibly be infected with a contagious illness. How to keep the cars sanitized when multiple riders are cycling in and out each day is an open question, though. What's more, since this is a testing program for an unproven product, autonomous Waymo vehicles still employ a backup driver.
UPDATE: June 1, 2020, 8:21 a.m. EDT Added a statement from Waymo.
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