New York plans limited rollout of self-driving taxis

New York may finally be preparing to open the door to commercial self-driving car services, after years of maintaining some of the strictest autonomous vehicle rules in the United States.

While Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox, and Tesla have been expanding their robotaxi services in states such as California, Texas, and Arizona, New York law currently allows for the testing of autonomous vehicles but only with a human driver behind the wheel. There is no legal pathway for anything like the fully driverless commercial operations now running in San Francisco or Las Vegas.

That could change soon. During an annual State of the State address on Tuesday, Governor of New York Kathy Hochul will announce legislation to expand existing regulations to allow limited commercial self-driving car services in cities across New York State, except in New York City, her office confirmed on Monday.

However, the plan requires the companies to request approval for running pilot robotaxi services and having adequate safety records, in addition to community support for the roll-out of services in the region.

However, there isn’t any mention of how companies would be able to extend the pilot projects into full commercial scale. Comments from the office of Governor Hochul stated that the specifics for the larger launch would be described later.

The situation in New York City is a different story. This city has its own autonomous vehicle testing permit policy and does not accommodate self-driving vehicles.

Waymo has a permit allowing the company to test eight vehicles in parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan; however, the vehicles have to be accompanied by safety drivers and do not transport passengers. The permit is due to expire at the end of March.

Public data indicates that Waymo invested more than $370,000 in lobbying the New York government last year. This company is already offering fully automated services in five cities across the US and aims to enter the global markets this year.