Google Sister Waymo, GM's Cruise Can Now Offer Commercial Self-Driving Rides In California

General Motors Co (NYSE: GM) and Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) self-driving subsidiaries Cruise and Waymo on Thursday secured autonomous vehicle permits to offer paid rides to passengers in California.

What Happened: The California Department of Motor Vehicles has issued the permits to offer driverless rides for passengers to both companies and they can now charge a fee for autonomous services offered to the public.

The permits will allow Cruise to offer light-duty driverless rides to passengers at night in some parts of San Francisco between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time, at a maximum speed limit of 30 miles per hour. The permit also allows the rides to operate in light fog and rain.

Waymo is allowed to run its fleet within parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties with a speed limit of up to 65 mph.

See Also: Waymo And Cruise Said To Be Seeking Approval To Commercialize Self-Driving Rides In San Francisco

Why It Matters: Waymo and Cruise have so far limited expansion to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for self-driving tests. The development is key to their plans as the companies eye scaling up the business after years of revenue-generating deployment delay of self-driving vehicles.

Cruise, which is backed by Honda Motor Co (NYSE: HMC) and SoftBank Group (OTC: SFTBY), would receive $1.35 billion from the latter’s Vision Fund once its autonomous vehicles are ready for commercial deployment, as part of the earlier agreement.

Waymo and Cruise are not alone as the Silicon Valley startup Nuro became the first company to secure a California DMV deployment permit in December.

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Photo: Courtesy of Waymo