Waymo submitted an application to test autonomous cars without safety drivers in California; source says tests will start near its Mountain View headquarters
Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, this week applied to test cars without drivers on California roads, the Chronicle has learned.
Context & Ripple Effects
This application is the paperwork step behind a plan already leaking out: months earlier, sources told The Information that Waymo was preparing a commercial ride-hailing service with no human safety drivers as soon as that fall. Filing with California's DMV is how Alphabet's self-driving unit converts that ambition into legal street tests, starting close to home near Mountain View.
First-order effects
- California's DMV now has to rule on Waymo's driverless-testing application, and the first cars affected are Waymo's own fleet operating around its Mountain View headquarters, where safety drivers would come out of the loop.
Second-order effects
- A granted application creates the precedent the regulator then builds on: by October the DMV issued Waymo the state's first driverless-testing permit, and by 2019 a separate passenger-service pilot let riders aboard while still requiring safety drivers and barring fares.
Third-order effects
- The staged path this filing starts — private roads-adjacent tests, then a first-of-kind permit, then paid-free passenger pilots — becomes the template for how driverless ride-hailing scales in California, culminating years later in fully driverless freeway testing in the Bay Area.
The trend: Driverless deployment advances through incremental regulatory permissions rather than a single approval, with each granted test widening the operational envelope for robotaxi services.