Ultimately, Waymo says, self-driving cars could prevent many of the 1. Those vehicles were delivered to Waymo in December."The key to acceptance is exposure and education," she said.Phoenix-area residents could apply on Waymos website starting Tuesday.Waymo - created by Google in 2009 - has given rides to the public before in its hometown of Mountain View, California. It will allow hundreds of people in the Phoenix area to take rides in the vehicles so it can get feedback on the experience. about a potential collaboration.Waymo, Googles self-driving car project, said Tuesday its adding 500 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans to its self-driving vehicle fleet.

The companies have been testing the vehicles in Arizona, California and Michigan.Waymo began offering a small number of public rides in Arizona two months ago before deciding to expand the program, a spokesman said. Opening Waymos vehicles to the public will help build riders confidence, she said.Waymo said it wants to learn where people want to go in a self-driving vehicle, how they communicate with it and what kinds of information and controls they want. Fiat Chryslers U. headquarters is in Auburn Hills, Michigan. In 2015, it let a blind man ride around Austin, Texas, in one of its completely self-driving pods.Fiat Chrysler and Waymo have been partners since last spring, when they announced they would build 100 self-driving Pacifica hybrids minivans.Fiat Chrysler builds the Pacifica minivan in Windsor, Canada, just across the border from Detroit.

The vehicles will also pick up riders in Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert, Waymo said. Ride-hailing company Uber has had self-driving Volvos on the road in Pittsburgh since last fall."This collaboration is helping both companies learn how to bring self-driving cars to market, and realize the safety and mobility benefits of this technology," said Waymo chief John Krafcik in a company release.Waymo isnt the first to put regular passengers in self-driving cars in the race to develop the technology.S. It adds Waymos self-driving software and hardware, including sensors and cameras, at a facility in Michigan.Fiat Chrysler and Google for the first time will offer rides to the public in the self-driving vehicles they are building under an expanding partnership.

Its also in talks with Honda Motor Co. The Phoenix program will be much larger in scale, and it will be the first to use the Pacifica minivans. Boston startup nuTonomy is giving taxi rides to passengers in Singapore and Boston. All of the vehicles will have Waymo backup drivers who can take over in an emergency.2 million deaths that occur on worldwide roads each year.Waymo has made clear that it intends to form partnerships with automakers and not build its own self-driving cars. In Spring machine supplier all cases, there is a backup driver behind the wheel.Michelle Krebs, an executive analyst for the car shopping site Autotrader, says studies have shown that a majority of Americans are still reluctant to ride in a fully self-driving car.