Waymo has reached a major milestone in its efforts to establish driverless taxis in lifting its waiting list to get rides in San Francisco.
Any person now seeking to get around San Francisco, where this Google-affiliated company has focused its initial operations, can now create an account and order a ride from a self-driving vehicle right away.
Waymo, announcing the change on Tuesday, said it had been working towards this day for years with gradual improvements. In addition to San Francisco, the company's taxis can be found on roads in Phoenix in the US state of Arizona and Los Angeles in California.
Waymo cars are now also allowed to drive completely without humans at the wheel. In the streets of San Francisco in particular, the company's white Jaguar I-Pace cars with cameras and laser radars are now part of the cityscape.
As a tourist from abroad, however, it is still difficult to get a Waymo ride since the app needed to book taxis is not available in app stores linked to non-US countries.
Waymo emerged from Google's robot car programme and is now particularly advanced in the development of technology for self-driving cars, with the company saying its robotaxis now make more than 50,000 journeys a week.
At the same time, Waymo has recently come under the scrutiny of the US authorities following a number of incidents.
One recent incident caught in footage sparked debate over whether a Waymo car was driving dangerously by crossing into the opposite lane to overtake a group of electric unicycle riders. The manoeuvre ended without an accident, but some commented that the car driven in the wrong side of the street for too long.
Waymo says its software is safe and steers the cars carefully, and advocates of self-driving technology say it leads to far fewer accidents than human drivers.