By Staff Reporter
TORONTO — Waymo, the self-driving taxi company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, said Friday that it is coming to Toronto. Its vehicles could show up on city streets “in the coming days” to start mapping, with fully driverless paid rides targeted for 2028. It would be the company’s first Canadian market, and a test of whether robotaxis can handle a Great Lakes winter.
The company described a “rigorous, phased, safety-first approach” in a news release, according to CBC News. The first phase will map the local street network, with trained specialists behind the wheel. Waymo said its service has been approved for Ontario’s automated vehicle pilot program.
Co-chief executive Tekedra Mawakana said the company looked forward to working with businesses and communities in Toronto that share its commitment “to safer streets and more accessible mobility,” CBC reported. Waymo has chosen Toronto-based Element Fleet Management to handle maintenance, customer service and other support.
How Ontario got here
Ontario launched its automated vehicle pilot program about 10 years ago. At first it required a human in the driver’s seat. In 2019 the province changed the rules to allow driverless operation under certain conditions, CBC reported.
That makes this a provincial decision. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said the law allowing the cars comes from the province and does not involve the city, according to CBC. She said her top concern is safety and making sure autonomous vehicles are held to the highest standards. After meeting with Waymo earlier this year, her office had said any move toward driverless vehicles must not put people out of work.
Toronto’s earlier experience with the technology has been mixed. In a letter to the province, city staff wrote that self-driving delivery vehicles tested by Magna International were “incapable of making right turns at red lights” and sometimes rebooted in the middle of traffic, CBC reported. Gatik, another California company, began deploying 50 autonomous box trucks for Loblaw last year.
The winter question
Waymo already runs fleets of electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in major U.S. markets, CBC reported. Heavy snow is a different problem.
“All the sensors can get occluded by snow,” Sidney Givigi, a professor of robotics and machine learning at Queen’s University’s School of Computing, told CBC, “which is something that they don’t have in California.”
“What if there is ice on the road, or you have a very strong blizzard and then you try to stop your car on a hill and it does not stop?” he said.
Mr. Givigi also said that in good conditions he trusts the machine at least as much as a person. “The system does not get tired,” he said. “They don’t take risks, which lots of drivers do.”
That question matters on both sides of the Niagara River. Toronto and Buffalo get the same lake-effect squalls, freeze-thaw potholes and whiteout days. If Waymo can operate safely through a Toronto January, it will have shown something that warm-weather deployments cannot. If it cannot, regulators in Ontario and New York will learn that too.
Jobs and drivers
Some in the auto industry welcomed the news. Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning that research shows self-driving vehicles operate safely more consistently than human drivers. He wants more of the engineering work done in Canada.
“General Motors has 1,000 engineers [working on] autonomous driving in Oshawa that we never talk about,” Mr. Volpe said. “I’d like to see another 5,000 of those [jobs] here in the Toronto region.”
Ride-hailing companies are positioning themselves as partners rather than rivals. “We believe the future of mobility will be hybrid, with human drivers and autonomous vehicles operating side by side,” Laura Miller, Uber Canada’s head of policy, said in a statement reported by CBC. Ms. Miller urged the province, industry and communities to set clear safety standards and to “prepare for the impact on workers.” Uber has partnerships with more than 30 autonomous vehicle companies, including Toronto-based Waabi, she said.
Torontonians stopped on the street were split. One resident, Kyle MacDonnell, told CBC he would “absolutely not” ride in one. Another, Waleed Anwar, said “it’s a matter of time” before they become the norm.
What to watch
The announcement leaves several things unclear. Waymo has not said publicly how many vehicles it will test in Toronto, which neighbourhoods it will map first, or what winter-performance data it will share with the province. Ontario has not said what safety reporting it will require before approving paid, driverless rides. And neither government has said what support, if any, displaced taxi and ride-hail drivers would get.
For Western New Yorkers who cross the Peace Bridge to work, shop or fly out of Pearson, the answers will show up within a few years. Fleets that learn to drive in Toronto snow could one day be pitched to cities on this side of the border, and Buffalo officials may want to watch how Ontario writes the rules.
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