Self-driving taxi company Waymo to launch in Toronto, plans to begin service in 2028

Waymo, an American self-driving taxi company, will begin testing its operations in Toronto this week with the aim of carrying its first passengers in 2028, after being given the green light by the Ontario government to participate in an autonomous vehicle pilot program.

The California-based company, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. GOOGL-Q, already operates a fleet of about 4,000 fully autonomous vehicles in dozens of cities globally, including San Francisco, Singapore, Tokyo and London.

Waymo will partner with Element Fleet Management EFN-T, a Toronto-based logistics company, to organize its operations in Toronto. The company intends to hire hundreds of people in Toronto in customer service, fleet management and driving roles, according to a Friday press release.

Waymo vehicles will start mapping the streets of Toronto “in the coming days” with trained autonomous vehicle specialists behind the wheels, the company said.

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Waymo already has existing ties to Canada. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board was one of the company’s earliest investors, participating in two funding rounds in 2020 and 2021. Magna International MG-T was also one of the company’s early investors and a key manufacturing partner in the construction of an autonomous vehicle plant in Arizona, which will build Jaguar and Zeekr electric vehicles that will be part of Waymo’s fleet.

There is some evidence that Waymo driverless cars enhance traffic safety. An independent study from the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published in June found that Waymo cars were involved in 68-per-cent fewer crashes than human drivers over a three-year period, across four American cities.

If Waymo begins carrying passengers in Toronto in 2028, it might face competition from existing ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft, which already have a dominant market share in the city and are planning their own autonomous vehicle fleets.