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A Waymo self-driving car in front of Google's San Francisco headquarters last week. Photo: Getty

Adrian Weckler

At first, I thought it was an online mapping car. But then I could see that the white Jaguar slowly passing me by on a street in San Francisco seemed to have no driver.

It was a Waymo – the Google-owned autonomous taxi service that has been operating commercially in the city for almost a year, and which this week has been opened up to all San Franciscans without any “waitlist”.