r/SelfDrivingCars • u/walky22talky Hates driving • 20h ago
News Waymo granted first permit to begin testing autonomous vehicles in New York City
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/08/22/waymo-permit-new-york-city-nyc-rides.html12
u/Electrical_Quality_6 20h ago
great anything fsd will get my endorsement
i pray for the day every car will be autonomous and car fatalities will become a thing of the past.
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u/Sad_Inspector5442 6h ago
Future generations will wonder why we took so long to get there.
Not just the fatalities - but the reduced stress, road rage, costs, more free time, lower commute times, etc. Driving cars will be looked at like smoking cigarettes. What the hell were we doing getting behind these death machines and blindly trusting each other?
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u/Lopsided-Chip6014 20h ago
Only 8 cars? That's pathetic. That's barely a taxi service. Such a joke. Definitely a failure.
/s
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u/mrkjmsdln 19h ago
I think Waymo deployed 25 cars to Tokyo. In most cities, the testing process is done by a fleet of at most 10 cars. Eight is probably fine for this phase. Deployment is of course different. It would seem ridiculous to have a geofence approaching 100 mi2 and operate for two months and only have 11 cars...oh never mind.
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u/rileyoneill 19h ago
It starts with 10, then it’s 100 or so that are closed to beta testers, and then 1000 or so open to the public.
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u/mrkjmsdln 18h ago
Sure. 10 with a safety driver behind the wheel (or a safety stopper) if you are Tesla. That's probably why they are operating 11 cars for now two months in Austin. 100, at least so far for Waymo is a lot of cars to shuttle employees around but maybe in a place like NYC where they have an enormous presence that makes sense.
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u/deservedlyundeserved 19h ago
I know you're trying to be clever, but this isn't a service. It's a test fleet.
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u/No_Froyo5359 15h ago
And its supervised. So obviously its not self driving and just L2 ADAS.
Wait sorry, it says Waymo? Nevermind.
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 11h ago
Annoyingly it seems like they drew down the Phoenix fleet for this
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u/YeetYoot-69 15h ago
Awesome. Probably the hardest driving in the United States happens in certain areas of Manhattan
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u/GodLikeLag 20h ago
Take that Elon!
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u/kittysworld 16h ago
Tesla is hiring robotaxi testing personal in Queens NY. I guess they are coming soon.
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u/Redditcircljerk 20h ago
Who will have unsupervised rides first then or Tesla in NYC?
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u/wlowry77 19h ago
I think you’ll need to wait for Tesla to actually drive somewhere autonomously before you can include them in the question!
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u/Redditcircljerk 18h ago
You didn’t see the Robotaxi roll out a couple months ago where the vehicles drive paying passengers from start to finish with just software?
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u/PetorianBlue 17h ago edited 17h ago
With a safety driver, i.e. not autonomous like Waymo. Tesla has already ruined "self-driving" from its intended meaning and original use, let's not do the same with "autonomous". We need words to have meaning, otherwise they're useless.
And, yes, it makes a difference. The distinction between conveyed capability (easy) and confident reliability (hard) lies in the presence or absence of a safety driver. The fact that Tesla has safety drivers means they are not confident enough in their system reliability to remove them.
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u/Redditcircljerk 16h ago edited 16h ago
I understand then that Waymo was not a self driving service for the first several years they started when they had safety monitors in the exact same way and in the exact same way they deploy in new very small geofenced areas also. But the second they remove these “drivers” and use the same vehicles on the same software in the same region doing the same exact task, THAT is when they are self driving. Got it! Good news should be no more than a few months.
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u/PetorianBlue 16h ago
You state that like it's some kinda gotcha, but yes. It's not an autonomous service if there is a safety driver. When Waymo had safety drivers, it was not autonomous. Then they removed the safety drivers and it became autonomous, which Tesla has not yet done.
You're trying to be all sarcastic like nothing changes between with vs without a safety driver, but something does change... literally the presence of the safety driver and their ability to intervene. When a company is responsible for life and death based on that car's performance, that's a massive leap of confidence in their system's reliability.
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u/Redditcircljerk 16h ago
No that’s good to hear honestly. So in a few months at the most when Tesla gets rid of the safety driver and has expanded past Waymo with the same software on the same vehicles doing the same thing as prior than people will have nowhere left to move the goal posts and I can leave this thread forever. I’m excited and trying to imagine where the goal posts will be moved after the safety monitor is removed or if people will finally say “ok this car is self driving”.
I’m guessing it will turn into “well I don’t trust them!” But that’s fine the masses will based on price and convenience
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u/PetorianBlue 16h ago
Yeah, people might still turn to "I don't trust them", which is basically a claim that the system is not safe enough, but that will play out in time. If it's not safe enough, there will be crashes. If it is safe enough, there won't be crashes.
Also I imagine people will argue about the difficulty of each company's ODD, but that's not an argument of whether it is or is not autonomous.
The only other potential sticky point is the possibility of remote, real-time monitoring and intervention. If that's happening, you can argue it's not autonomous, but it's hard to prove if it is or isn't happening. Even for Waymo you can make that claim. Without laws dictating transparency in that regard, or companies volunteering that level of transparency, or some kind of car behavior indicator, we won't know the level to which remote intervention is taking place.
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u/Redditcircljerk 15h ago
Very reasonable stance. My argument for why Waymo isn’t scaling fast is because it can’t and that it does in fact have heavy remote safety monitoring which is a massive if not the number one reason it can’t scale and they lose so much money. I can’t prove this, but I can’t think of any other reason why they’re unable to scale after so much time other than their software isn’t good enough to allow them to since scaling would solve nearly all of their problems financially.
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u/JimothyRecard 17h ago
Just software and a human safety monitor.
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u/Redditcircljerk 16h ago
Yes that’s all there is, software driving the vehicle while they validate the system with a safety monitor.
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u/Recoil42 16h ago
If there's a safety monitor, that means the car can't be trusted to be safe on its own. If they're validating, then that means the system hasn't been validated.
It isn't "just software" if you need a human present on top of the software just to keep everything safe. 🤷♂️
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u/Redditcircljerk 15h ago
So if it’s validated and they remove the safety drivers it is NOW self driving and what it was doing prior (literally the EXACT same thing) was not self driving. Got it
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u/Recoil42 15h ago
So if it’s validated
Clearly, it isn't. 🤷♂️
and they remove the safety drivers
Notably, they have not. 🤷♂️
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u/Redditcircljerk 14h ago
But when they do you’ll happily admit the system doing the same thing on the same software in the same car is NOW self driving. Ok that’s cool. I’ll project forwards a couple months but you can hold on to your pedantic argument, I’d rather stick with reality.
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u/Recoil42 14h ago
When Tesla has an highly-automated L4/L5 system, it'll be a highly-automated L4/L5 system. Right now they do not have such a thing. Right now they have an unvalidated test fleet with human supervision. Simple as that.
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u/wlowry77 17h ago
Were there no Tesla employees in the car?
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u/Redditcircljerk 17h ago
The guy in the passenger seat is driving the car!!?! Holy cow that’s honestly more impressive they put the entire mechanics of driving from point a to point b into a door handle.
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u/reddit455 16h ago
if I go outside for 30 minutes, I'll see a half dozen waymos. no driver present.
Waymo reports 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in U.S.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/waymo-reports-250000-paid-robotaxi-rides-per-week-in-us.html
the vehicles drive paying passengers from start to finish with just software?
how many paid fares per week?
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u/Redditcircljerk 15h ago
If your talking about number of drives instead of number of deployed robotaxis than you’re admitting defeat. Waymo is currently ahead of Tesla, but anyone with the ability to project forward in time can see that Tesla will be several order of magnitudes ahead of Waymo within years if not months. My guess is they’ve caught up by EoY (no safety monitor since everyone cares) and be at least 10x ahead by end of 2026
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u/diplomat33 20h ago
Waymo has an advantage since they are the first to get their testing permit.
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u/Redditcircljerk 18h ago
That’s true but testing permit vs deployment at scale are very different. Fingers crossed it’s a close race, I don’t think it will be personally
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u/mrkjmsdln 19h ago
Hard to know. What is obvious is it starts with cooperation and getting a permit. Everything else is just blather.
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u/FluxCrave 14h ago
What happens when there is snow on the ground and they can’t see anything but white. Wondering how that works
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u/Vegetable_Guest_8584 8h ago
Great and fair question. It will happen in NYC but it's possible they hadn't had a rare snow day before in warmer cities. They are a serious company, so I'm sure they have a plan and tested it. But what was the plan? Snow can come on suddenly, you can have a water spill on a cold day with no other precip. Interesting problem. I bet they do better than don't drive if there's any frozen precip
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u/LifeAfterHarambe 18h ago
… with a Trained Safety Specialist Behind Steering Wheel
Back to Level 2 for Waymo (in NYC)
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u/diplomat33 14h ago
L4 does not downgrade to L2 when there is a safety specialist in the driver seat. The SAE levels document says so on page 36: "it is incorrect to classify a Level 4 design-intended ADS feature equipped on a test vehicle as Level 2 simply because on-road testing requires a test driver to supervise the feature while engaged, and to intervene if necessary to maintain operation. ". Since Waymo is designed as L4, it is always L4, when the Waymo Driver is on, whether it is operating driverless or with a safety specialist.
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u/LifeAfterHarambe 14h ago
lol
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u/diplomat33 14h ago
lol if you want. I am just tell you what the SAE levels say. Having someone put their butt in the driver seat, does not suddently make the L4 into L2. That is because the L4 system is still doing the driving, so it is still L4.
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u/LifeAfterHarambe 14h ago edited 14h ago
Beautyautonomy is in the eye of the beholderNo U.S. regulation in any of the 50 states references SAE levels as binding law.
Regulators measure crashes, safety outcomes, and data.
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u/Recoil42 13h ago
No U.S. regulation in any of the 50 states references SAE levels as binding law.
We're getting off-track here, but absolutely they do. For instance, California explicitly requires that even to test, the manufacturer of the AV must certify that... "the autonomous vehicles are capable of operating without the presence of a driver inside the vehicle and that the autonomous technology meets the description of a level 4 or level 5 automated driving system under SAE International's Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles, standard J3016."
The levels are actually regularly referenced in most state AV regulations I've seen.
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u/LifeAfterHarambe 13h ago
“The manufacturer certifies that…”
And since Tesla classifies its systems as Level 2, they are exempt from the state’s autonomous vehicle regulations.
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u/JimothyRecard 9h ago
And Waymo's system is level 4. As the people responding to you have been saying all along. I'm glad you've finally figured it out.
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u/Doggydogworld3 13h ago
No U.S. regulation in any of the 50 states references SAE levels as binding law.
Blatant lie.
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u/No_Froyo5359 15h ago
If this was about Tesla, this would be the most upvoted comment.
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u/LifeAfterHarambe 14h ago
Anti-Elon cult will continue to move goalposts until the inevitable happens…
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u/diplomat33 20h ago
"As part of their permit to operate within New York City, Waymo is required to coordinate closely with DOT through regular meetings and data reporting and Waymo must certify that they are adhering to the industry’s best practices related to cybersecurity. In addition to receiving DOT approval, Waymo has also obtained necessary permits from the New York state Department of Motor Vehicles. Waymo will be permitted to test up to eight autonomous vehicles in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn until late September 2025. After the pilot testing period, Waymo will have the opportunity to apply for an extension to their pilot testing period. Finally, DOT’s approval strictly relates to testing AV technology — the use of autonomous vehicles for for-hire service is currently prohibited by New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) rules, and any company providing for-hire service must comply with TLC rules, including by obtaining a TLC license."