Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

It's fascinating seeing all the comments elsewhere anytime Waymo starts testing in another city along the lines of, "ah, but how will they handle X, Y, and Z here?? Checkmate, robots!" despite having already launched service in several other cities.

Granted, NYC is the biggest city in the US, so maybe that sort of reaction is more reasonable there than when people in Dallas or Boston do it.

Since Waymo is very reliable in LA and SF, you will be just fine in NYC.

Your grid system is far less of a challenge than the amount of hills, twists, narrow streets and low visibility back streets in California.

I genuinely think the most complicated challenge for Waymo in NYC will be…winter snow and ice.

NYC is a new set of challenges. As you already mentioned snow and ice is new. But also missing the high density of people and cars per square area. Behavior of drivers and pedestrians are different and much less polite. I can see it working in NYC but "just fine" is a bit of an over confidence... at least not for the first few years before they learn to deal with these issues that they don't face yet in LA and SF.

Don't forget the unique NYC challenge of people waiting to cross the street not on the sidewalk but just into the street itself.

People in LA wait to jaywalk on the street or even in the suicide lane all the time. The Waymos handle it fine; generally by asserting it has right of way unless collision is obviously imminent. They'll even happily swerve around you if you're too far out.

Pedestrians always have the right of way on city streets. Jaywalking is just walking.