Waymo’s vehicles are now providing autonomous rides to customers in a defined service area in the Las Vegas Valley, and the Road Warrior took a ride in Southern Nevada’s latest self-driving offering.
The 24-square-mile zone allows for Waymo rides to travel to resorts on the Strip and neighboring areas, including Allegiant Stadium, Chinatown and near UNLV.
The Ojai
Waymo’s sixth-generation Ojai vehicle will make up the company’s fleet in Las Vegas. It uses radar for distance and speed, lidar for 3D imaging, cameras to provide visuals and acoustical sensors, known as external audio receivers, to detect sirens from law enforcement and first responders. The vehicle features elevator-style doors, seating to accommodate up to four passengers and three large LED screens, where various elements of the ride can be controlled.
“Las Vegas will be one of the first markets in the entire company to ride in this kind of vehicle,” Waymo spokesperson Mark Lewis said. “It’s super roomy inside with three giant screens and a lot more comfort options that will help you along the ride. With a lot of space in the trunk, too”
The baby-blue vehicles, with their exterior gadgetry, are hard to miss while traveling anywhere within Waymo’s service area.
Like other ride-hailing services, customers will have to download Waymo’s smartphone application to hail a ride. With Waymo’s paid service being just a week old, only select users are allowed to book rides.
Reactive ride
Last week the Road Warrior was provided a ride in a Waymo Ojai — from a coffee shop in Chinatown to the Palazzo resort and back.
The ride was smooth, with the Ojai operating with precision and responding to whatever was happening around it. The ride to the Strip included encountering a police situation on Desert Inn Road that saw a portion of the intersection being temporarily blocked.
“You see here there is a police car ahead with lights on, not only is the traffic moving, but you see on the screen in front of you that there’s rotating red marks that show emergency vehicle flashers,” Lewis said. “The Waymo driver (autonomous system) understands there’s multiple police cars here and it’s making its decision about how to proceed.”
The screens in the vehicle displayed silhouettes of all the cars around our Waymo and the police vehicles, with a green line showing how the Ojai planned to navigate the road blockage.
“Likely because nothing is blocking our path and traffic is moving in between that,” Lewis said. “It is understanding that it could proceed but proceed safely.”
The Ojai took us into the porte-cochere of the Palazzo, then we headed back on the Strip to Spring Mountain Road and back to Chinatown. At one point on the return trip just west of the Fashion Show Mall, a bus briefly veered into our travel lane and the Ojai reacted quickly and moved into the lane to its left to avoid contact.
Waymo fleet
As rides become more widely available, Waymo’s fleet will grow with it. At launch, Waymo has a couple of dozen vehicles in use in Southern Nevada, Lewis said.
“Which is pretty typical when we launch in a new city,” Lewis said. “We’re going to scale and scale our territory here, which is right about 24 square miles. We want to serve different parts of the town, the northern areas of the Strip, more parts of the city in Las Vegas and anywhere else in the county that is expressing ridership interest.”
Waymo has the ability to scale to 1,000 vehicles in the Las Vegas Valley, as approved by the Nevada Transportation Authority.
Waymo wants to serve not only the visitors in the resort corridor, but also Southern Nevada residents.
“We’re here for families who want to go to grandma’s house or to bring grandma to their house,” Lewis said. “We want to be here for the citizens of Las Vegas, as well as the amazing stops on the Strip.”
Las Vegas educated in autonomous vehicles
Launching in a city that has been testing and offering autonomous rides in it for almost a decade was advantageous for Waymo, since locals are more aware and educated on self-driving vehicles than in most cities.
“I think people in Las Vegas are more educated about autonomous vehicles than perhaps any other market,” Lewis said. “Zoox is already here from other testing that’s already happened. It’s a really interesting place because you have more dependable traffic in a neighborhood and then you have really complex traffic scenarios on the Strip.”
The paid rides launched last week came after nine months of testing in Las Vegas and overall with Waymo surpassing 220 million miles of fully autonomous rides with no operator in the driver seat from its operations in Las Vegas and other cities.
“That’s really important as it gives perspective of the breadth and the scope of the driving experience that we have already done,” Lewis said. “And it compares with the localization we’ve done here over the last nine months.”
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X. Send questions and comments to roadwarrior@reviewjournal.com.
