Waymo’s Expansion and Tesla’s Trials: Alphabet’s Waymo continued to scale up its robotaxi operations. In mid-June, Waymo applied for a New York City permit to begin autonomous car tests – marking NYC’s first AV pilot if approved reuters.com. Waymo also expanded its service area in California’s Bay Area after new state approvals reuters.com. As of June, Waymo operates ~1,500 self-driving vehicles giving over 250,000 rides per week across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin reuters.com. Meanwhile, Tesla prepared to kick off limited trials of a robotaxi service with as few as 10 cars in late June – the company’s first public foray into autonomous ride-hailing reuters.com. At the Aspen Ideas Festival on June 27, Ford CEO Jim Farley made news by endorsing LiDAR for safer self-driving, implicitly critiquing Tesla’s camera-only approach. “Where the camera will be completely blinded, the LiDAR system will see exactly what’s in front of you,” Farley said, underscoring Ford’s view that a mix of LiDAR, cameras and radar is needed for reliability evxl.co.
