ORLANDO, Fla. — As Orlando leaders lauded the future of Grand National Drive during a ribbon-cutting Thursday, a different kind of future crashed their press conference, if only for a few seconds.
A white Jaguar sport utility vehicle with sensors mounted on all sides, branded with the name of a company that seeks to become a household name within a few years: Waymo.
It was one of Mayor Buddy Dyer’s first looks at the company’s cars on his roads, and he said he had been on calls with the company’s leaders shortly after they announced they were coming to Orlando two days prior.
“They go into a city and figure out how drivers drive, basically,” he said, responding to a joke about Florida’s drivers. “(Waymo) made the point that Orlando is not Miami. We expect better driving, but things like, do our cars stop for pedestrians?”
For now, Waymo’s cars are being human-driven around Orlando. A WFTV crew watched one car make several laps around a Starbucks parking lot, presumably taking note of the locations of each stop sign.
The Orlando stop is just one of the Google-owned company’s announced 2025 road trip where it aims to open its algorithms to different scenarios across the United States. The company has launched in four cities: LA, San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix. It’s preparing to launch in Miami and Atlanta this summer.
Before it comes to Orlando, the company will conduct thousands of miles of testing so its cars act as close to others around it as possible to minimize the risk of crashes.
WFTV experienced a Waymo ride earlier in 2025 in San Francisco. It operated like any other ridesharing app. The car found its own parking spaces upon pickup and drop off. The tap of a phone unlocked the car, and a button on a screen on the back of the center console began the ride.
For an account’s first ride, a short tutorial plays. The car then defaults to spa music. A button is always present to call an operator in case of an emergency.
Data collected by the government and industry analysts so far shows Waymo vehicles are involved in crashes far less often than human-driven ones, and the cars are mostly not at fault.
Still, like any emerging technology, problems have popped up. The company recently recalled 1,200 vehicles after several collisions with chains stretching across roadways.
During the San Francisco ride, the car spent about 45 seconds in the middle of an intersection after it encountered an unexpected barrier made of plastic sticks preventing it from going straight.
After determining it wasn’t able to continue, the car rerouted, and the drive had no further issues.
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