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Waymo introduces $30-a-month premium tier for riders who want faster pickups

Waymo Premier

Uber One, meet Waymo Premier.

The robotaxi operator announced a new $29.99-a-month premium tier for riders who want a more elevated and exclusive autonomous experience. The invite-only membership service is aimed at Waymo customers who use the service most frequently, offering them a number of perks, including priority pickups, 10 percent cash back on every trip, early robotaxi access in new cities, and up to five free cancellations a month.

Waymo Premier will be initially offered to select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, the company said. The program will scale to new cities as Waymo continues to expand; the company h …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Waymo built a virtual driver to study how humans react to surprises on the road

Waymo taxis on a bright pink and green background.

Waymo has a lot of experience building virtual systems to help its autonomous vehicles better understand the real world. It built realistic 3D worlds to better anticipate natural disasters and unpredictable edge cases. It created a virtual representation of a hyperattentive driver to test against its own autonomous vehicles in a series of simulated scenarios to see which is better at crash avoidance.

Now, in a new research paper published today in Nature Communications, Waymo describes a new computer-based cognitive model that explains how human drivers make split-second decisions to avoid crashes. The company thinks the new model will serv …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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