Waymo & Uber to Launch in Hotlanta in Summertime

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Last Updated on: 16th April 2025, 02:02 am

Along with Waymo’s expansion into Tokyo, Japan, the company is continuing its robotaxi rollout in major US cities. It recently announced it was coming to Washington, DC, and more recently (this week), Waymo and Uber started letting residents join an “interest list” to use the robotaxi service in Atlanta, Georgia. By the summer, people will be able to start hailing Waymo robotaxis.

Waymo in Hotlanta

As in Austin, Uber is acting as an exclusive partner for Waymo in Atlanta. If you want a Waymo, you need to get on through Uber in Hotlanta. I have to admit that I find the partnership a little odd. Of course, it makes plenty of sense that Waymo can find many more riders right now through the Uber connection, and Uber gets all the customers interested in riding in a robotaxi. However, they have to split the cash, and in the long term, why would Waymo give away part of its revenue to another company — especially given that it already has a well functioning app it uses in other cities? I have to think that Waymo’s long-term plan is to ditch Uber (or buy it) and this is just a way to quickly gain market share and acceptance, but tell me if I’m missing something.

Okay, I get it that Uber handles the charging, maintenance, and cleaning, and that Uber’s app is presumably more sophisticated than Waymo’s with regard to pricing, but still….

As of yesterday, you can add your name to the interest list in Atlanta via Waymo’s website. Via the Uber app, after making sure it’s updated to the latest version, there’s a place in Account–>Settings–>Ride Preferences where you can express interest in using autonomous vehicles.

“In Austin, we’re already seeing positive signals with the vast majority of Uber riders choosing to ride with a Waymo autonomous vehicle when given the opportunity, and most riders have been rating their trip as 5-stars,” Uber wrote alongside this announcement. “With 14 AV partners to date — and tens of thousands of autonomous trips happening every month — we’re excited to expand our years-long partnership with Waymo, recently bringing autonomous rides to Austin, and soon Atlanta, exclusively through the Uber app.”

Initially, Waymo will cover 65 square miles of ATL. However, as it has done in other cities, the coverage area will grow over time. Rates will be the same as riders get using UberX, Uber Green, Uber Comfort, or Uber Comfort Electric.

While Waymo already operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin, it plans to test robotaxi services in 10 more US markets this year.

The Waymo vehicles on offer in Atlanta will reportedly be all-electric Jaguar I-PACE SUVs. Perhaps new Zeekr or Hyundai EVs will be on the way in Hollywood of the South in the next year or so too, but there’s no word on that.

Along with its continued expansion in the US, Waymo partnered with WeRide in Abu Dhabi, UAE, to start offering robotaxi rides there in December, and, as noted at the top, the company is inching closer to a launch in Tokyo, Japan, partnering in that case with the largest taxi company in the city.

2025 Waymo Open Dataset Challenges

Along with all of the above announcement, Waymo also recently launched its 2025 Waymo Open Dataset Challenges. Here’s more from the company on what this is all about:

“For years, the Waymo Open Dataset and associated Challenges have advanced research in autonomous driving, robotics, computer vision, and machine learning. […]

“Autonomous vehicles represent the most mature application of AI in the physical world. Since the launch of the Waymo Open Dataset in 2019, it has become a key resource for over 53,000 researchers in machine learning and robotics around the world. To date, more than 4,000 academic papers have been published either citing the dataset or using it as a benchmark.

“Today, we are excited to kick off the 2025 Waymo Open Dataset Challenges, which will run from March 31 to May 22, 2025. The 2025 Challenges will focus on four key areas of research:

- Vision-based End-to-End Driving: Use camera inputs to predict optimal driving behavior in challenging situations.
- Scenario Generation: Develop generative models to add agents to a scene in order to create realistic traffic scenarios.
- Interaction Prediction: Forecast complex agent interaction outcomes.
- Sim Agents: Generate realistic future behaviors for all agents in a scene using historical trajectory data, with the option of leveraging our Waymax simulator.

“This year, we are particularly excited to host the Vision-based End-to-End Driving Challenge for the first time, offering a unique opportunity for participants to explore innovative AI techniques in this rapidly evolving research area. It’s important to note that, while this research Challenge focuses on a singular sensor modality, Waymo remains committed to utilizing a diverse sensor suite as we firmly believe it’s essential for autonomous driving in real-world conditions.

“Alongside the Vision-based End-to-End Driving Challenge, we are expanding the dataset with 5,000 new segments. This camera dataset extension is focused on fostering research around long-tail driving scenarios – some of the most challenging or rare driving situations that drivers encounter in different environments, such as construction zones during marathons, pedestrians falling off scooters, and unexpected obstacles on freeways.

“The remaining Challenges feature updated metrics based on our learnings from past Challenges. We’re excited to see how the research community pushes the boundaries of what’s possible this year.”

Exciting indeed!

Waymo is awarding $72,000 in these challenges. If you get 1st place in a Challenge, you will win $10,000. If you get 2nd place, you will win $5,000. And if you get 3rd place, you will win $3,000. True — this isn’t life-changing money, but it’s better than $0! You might also be given the opportunity to present at the Workshop on Autonomous Driving at CVPR in June 2025.

“The Challenges will close at 11:59 PM Pacific on May 22, 2025, but leaderboards will remain open for continued research contributions. Full competition rules and eligibility criteria are available here,” Waymo adds. “Good luck to all participants, and as always, we welcome your feedback!”

It’s great to see Waymo not only expanding its electric robotaxi services, but also expanding helpful use of AI in the physical world.

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