Years before Mayor Eric Adams authorized Waymo to trial its driverless cars in sections of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the company spent millions courting public officials in hopes of one day getting its autonomous vehicles approved to operate on New York City streets.
Lobbying disclosures show that Waymo — an Alphabet subsidiary and part of Google’s parent company — has, since at least 2019, invested more than $3 million in lobbying state and city officials, who would need to amend a law that bans driverless cars.
“We understand that as we operate in new areas, it’s on us to explain our approach,” Ethan Teicher, a Waymo spokesperson, told THE CITY. “That’s why our engagement with lawmakers is important — it reflects our commitment to explaining how our technology works and sharing our proven experience.”
Before New Yorkers can even consider getting into self-driving cars, robo-vehicles face several obstacles that go well beyond the end of this month, when a Waymo testing permit Adams approved in August lapses. Autonomous-vehicle systems have previously been tried in Albany and Buffalo.
State statute requires that vehicles be controlled by humans, and even if that rule changed, the city would still need to draft regulations governing self-driving cars. Multiple legislative attempts in the state legislature and the City Council to do that have stalled in recent years.
Driverless vehicles were legalized as part of the 2018 state budget, but to be on the road a licensed driver must sit behind the wheel. Companies must apply to the state Department of Motor Vehicles for permission to operate on city streets. (And if companies aim to operate in the boroughs, they would need approval from the city Department of Transportation.)
A state measure filed in Albany would remove the human-driver requirement — provided the autonomous vehicle carries insurance and satisfies certain other conditions. The bill has not progressed despite being introduced in 2021.
Assemblymember Brian Cunningham (D-Brooklyn), who sponsored the bill in the Assembly, said eliminating the mandate for a human occupant in a self-driving car would “begin to unlock some of the restrictive red tape that has held back the industry” from fully operating in New York state.
The bill’s other sponsor, Sen. Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester), who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, said he’s hopeful it will advance this session. Lawmakers originally required a person to be inside the vehicles to better ensure the technology’s safety.
“The technology has evolved,” he said.
Then there is resistance from the more than 175,000 Taxi and Limousine Commission-licensed drivers of yellow cabs and for-hire vehicles such as Uber and Lyft.
“Unlike other cities, New York is a place where driving is a full-time profession,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “You’re talking about full-time drivers — this is their only bread and butter.”
Through an app, riders can already book trips in more than 2,000 driverless cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and Austin, with Waymo saying its vehicles have accumulated more than 100 million fully autonomous miles in those five cities. Expansion is planned for next year in Miami, Dallas, Denver and Washington, D.C.
While a full New York deployment is unlikely to happen quickly, Waymo has been working to build political support to break into the nation’s largest city.
Records indicate that the company’s lobbying outreach has included city Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, several City Council members, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Manhattan Borough President and comptroller-elect Mark Levine and former Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, who previously led the TLC.
Adams and Rodriguez approved the city’s first-ever permit in August for testing autonomous vehicles. It authorized Waymo to conduct round-the-clock testing of eight of its Jaguar I-PACE cars through the end of this month, but requires a “trained safety specialist” to be in the driver’s seat at all times.
The tech firm would need to reapply to the permit program to prolong or broaden its testing, which New Yorkers have been documenting online through sightings of the Jaguars outfitted with technology already in use elsewhere.
“We know this testing is only the first step in moving our city further into the 21st century,” Adams said in August. “As we continue to implement responsible innovation, we will always prioritize street safety.”
Riding Out
The Aug. 22 approval of Waymo’s permit application by a mayor facing re-election and political peril surprised some elected officials.
“It kind of felt like, with the mayor sort of on his way out, sort of pulling random stuff out of a junk drawer and saying, ‘Hey, we never did this,’” said Councilmember Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), who co-sponsored a 2021 bill that would have required the TLC to adopt rules governing the use of autonomous vehicles as taxis.
The proposal — which also would have set rules for licensing, safety, vehicle standards, insurance and trip and fare reporting — went nowhere.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who co-sponsored that bill while on the City Council, said the legislation aimed, in part, to prevent a repeat of what occurred more than a decade ago, when Uber’s arrival in New York disrupted the city’s yellow cab industry and devastated the value of taxi medallions.
“It’s unfortunate that a law did not get passed in advance of Waymo’s pilot that would have provided a framework for the considerations that the city needs to make about the arrival of autonomous for-hire vehicles or taxis,” Lander told THE CITY. “Having gone through the Uber process, we have the ability to foresee this and work to set the public policy considerations and rules on the city’s terms, rather than a private company’s terms.”
Desai said the early stages of self-driving cars in New York show strong parallels to Uber’s debut in the city.
“Waymo is using the same tech-finance playbook of trying to dominate politically so they can monopolize financially,” she said.
But the city’s cramped streets would present a new set of challenges for autonomous vehicles.
“Autonomous vehicles right now might work in more suburban cities,” Brannan said. “But here, you’ve got pedestrians, and cyclists, and delivery workers and emergency vehicles and people just running in the street.
“The margin for error is less than razor thin.”
Waymo, which began as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, says it’s taking the measures necessary to safely provide fully autonomous vehicle service on streets where competition for space can be fierce.
“While New York City would certainly be the most densely populated city Waymo has tackled in the U.S., the Waymo Driver already confronts and capably navigates many challenges associated with density — including different types of road users, jaywalking pedestrians, traffic and emergency vehicles — in five major U.S. cities,” Teicher said.
The destiny of autonomous cars in New York City may rest with the next mayoral administration. Front-runners Zohran Mamdani — a Queens Assemblymember and the Democratic nominee — and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, may approach self-driving cars from different perspectives.
Mamdani has previously sided with taxi workers, joining their 2021 hunger strike over crippling medallion debt. Mamdani’s campaign did not reply to a request for comment.
Cuomo, as governor, pushed to introduce autonomous vehicles to New York, announcing in 2017 that they would be tested in Manhattan (then-Mayor Bill de Blasio opposed it). Cuomo’s successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, took a 2017 test ride in Albany while she was lieutenant governor. Cuomo’s campaign declined to comment.
The result of the mayoral race will set the scene for advancing a technology likely to further disrupt how many New Yorkers travel.
“That’s the big question,” Desai said. “Just because Adams gives this a final hour, desperate, green light does not mean the next administration cannot stop it and wait to formulate a thoughtful policy on how to address such a massive economic change.”
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