> Later this year, after we've finished adding in-vehicle barriers between the front row and the rear passenger cabin for in-vehicle hygiene and safety, we'll also be re-introducing rides with a trained vehicle operator, which will add capacity and allow us to serve a larger geographical area.
Makes it sound like the pandemic was a significant factor in expanding this to people who are not under NDA. Because if they were doing 5-10% before fully driverless and it was working, then there is a big issue with needing to retrofit the cars with infectious disease barriers, its going to make a lot more sense to just reduce the number of drivers entirely if you can.
But one thing that might be a little misleading is that I am reading this announcement as saying that they are actually only letting in Waymo One people now which have had to apply and be accepted, and then in a non-specific number of weeks the public can try to get in via the app. But you still basically have to be on a wait list in the app.
So the real difference today is letting people in the program already who are not under NDA ride without the safety driver.
But it's very exciting. And necessary to have some wait-list because it is actually possible that the thing could become viral (sorry) and turn into driverless ride tourism and then you could have 30,000 tourists standing around at the same time cussing at an app that says "Service at capacity" all day.