Your Next Rental Might Drive Itself, Courtesy of Waymo

Equally Google's self-driving cars march toward maturity, they've become increasingly mundane. They started off as futuristic cartoon-similar pods so became Lexus SUVs before transitioning into their latest iteration—Chrysler minivans—which are now set to be managed past Avis, the same visitor that rents you nondescript white sedans at the airport.

Nextcar Bug art Avis and Google's sis company Waymo confirmed the deal on Monday, co-ordinate to Bloomberg. The agreement will come across the rental motorcar visitor manage a fleet of minivans in Phoenix, where Waymo is currently operating a ride-hailing service with volunteer members of the public.

If you lot live in or around Phoenix, yous tin sign up to exist a guinea pig for Waymo's test drives, which volition take you anywhere you demand to go for no charge and include a human driver every bit a safety fill-in (and now presumably more than frequently vacuumed carpets and make clean windows, cheers to Avis).

Waymo's deal with Avis is limited: it's non-exclusive and confined to Phoenix, according to Bloomberg. But it represents not bad potential for the rest of America to get a taste of cocky-driving applied science. Through its Zipcar subsidiary, Avis cars are bachelor for hourly rentals in residential neighborhoods nationwide—non simply at airports, railroad train stations, and hotels—and Waymo is reportedly eyeing those cars as potential hereafter hosts for its cocky-driving technology.

"One of the wonderful things about partnerships similar this is that they are open," Waymo CEO John Krafcik told Bloomberg.

Google spent years working on self-driving cars before spinning the project off into Waymo, a division of Alphabet, terminal yr. That means it has a considerable head start over the fledgling self-driving efforts of its Silicon Valley competitor Apple tree. Apple CEO Tim Cook last week confirmed those efforts, explaining in an interview with Bloomberg that autonomous driving is "probably ane of the most difficult AI projects to work on."

Apple tree does accept one leg upwards on Waymo, still: it has been using Avis'south archrival Hertz to manage its fleet of Lexus SUVs. A Hertz subsidiary is listed on Apple'due south licenses to test cocky-driving cars on public roads in California, Bloomberg reported on Mon, although the company declined to comment.