At Waymo, we’re passionate about educating everyone on self-driving technology. While we’re working to increase access to our ride-hailing program, Waymo One, that allows people to experience and learn about this technology first hand, we also want to do our part to make resources available to those who have not yet experienced this technology.

Our CEO John Krafcik took the stage at IAA Frankfurt auto show today to share more on our journey here at Waymo and where we’re going next. Here’s a recap of his remarks.

Both human-driven and self-driving cars need to drive in many different weather conditions. Waymo is designing and testing our system to work safely and reliably in the toughest environments. Over the last few years our testing has taken us to snowy Novi, Michigan, rainy Kirkland, Washington, foggy San Francisco, and of course those dusty haboobs in Phoenix, Arizona. This month, Florida joins the list: we’re bringing both Waymo vehicles — including our Chrysler Pacificas and a Jaguar I-Pace — to the state to begin heavy rain testing.

As we continue to grow our team here at Waymo, we’re excited to share that Becky Bucich joins us as our Chief People Officer.

Today we’re announcing that Waymo has entered into an exclusive partnership with Renault and Nissan on behalf of The Alliance to explore driverless mobility services for passengers and deliveries in France and Japan.

Six months ago, we launched Waymo One, our commercial self-driving ride-hailing service in the Metro Phoenix area. Over that time we’ve grown to serve over 1,000 riders who hail Waymo cars each day to commute to and from work, bring their kids to school, get to the grocery store, and even to avoid parking at trailheads before a big run.

Today, we’re pleased to share some details of our partnership with Lyft, which will help us welcome even more riders in Metro Phoenix to experience self-driving technology.

In January, we announced that we would open the world’s first factory 100% dedicated to the mass production of L4 autonomous vehicles. We wanted this facility to benefit from a location in southeast Michigan — the heart of the American automotive industry — and its strong talent base. We began looking for a facility that would allow us to quickly get up and running by mid-2019, while offering us the flexibility to continue to grow and expand our operations in Michigan over time and where there was a strong pool of talent across engineering, operations, and fleet coordination.

Good news for our Metro Phoenix friends: Waymo’s ride-hailing app is now available on Google Play.

We opened our first location in Metro Phoenix in Chandler, Arizona in 2016, the same year we started driving in the region. Since then, we’ve grown our team to hundreds of local residents.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Waymo will open a technical service center in Mesa, a nearby city in Phoenix’s East Valley.

For most Americans, the AAA name is synonymous with safe driving. Whether it’s coming to drivers’ aid on the roadside or helping people be more careful drivers, AAA has been an advocate for safety for more than a century, and in fact helped create the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). That’s why we’re thrilled to see their leadership extend to the future of self-driving cars.

Waymo will be heading to Austin, Texas to participate in this year’s SXSW festival. Austin is the home of our first fully driverless ride on public roads , so it holds a special place in our hearts.

For over a decade, Waymo has been developing self-driving technology with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around.

Each year California requires companies with AV testing permits in the state to report on their disengagements. These reports assist the state in its understanding of how well a self-driving car is doing its job.

In the US, the auto industry is synonymous with Michigan. Auto manufacturing has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state and built an economic engine that helps fuel the entire country. Today, Waymo is excited to announce that we’ll grow our business in Michigan, as the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) voted to approve our effort to establish our manufacturing presence to build our self-driving vehicles in the state, creating hundreds of jobs along the way.

Almost 10 years ago, we were founded as the Google self-driving car project to explore one simple question: how can we best use fully self-driving technology to make roads safer? We’ve been focused on building the world’s most experienced driver ever since.

We’re excited to share that Deborah Hersman will join Waymo as our first Chief Safety Officer, and Amee Chande will join as our first Chief Commercial Officer. These newly created positions, which will both report to our CEO John Krafcik, emphasize our commitment to public safety, and our first important steps toward commercialization.

The holidays are a time to celebrate with family and friends, but they can also be a time of terrible tragedy.* Last year, in the days between Thanksgiving and the final countdown on New Year’s Eve, more than 1,100 people lost their lives to drunk drivers in the U.S. In fact, drunk driving deaths during the holiday season have risen 35% over the past five years. It’s a statistic that’s hard to bear when every drunk driving death is preventable.

At Waymo, our safety culture is core to everything we do. We have carefully developed our testing program in the past decade and over 10 million miles. Every day, our vehicles are testing in our private test facility and on city streets, and it is our responsibility to ensure the safety of our vehicles — for our test drivers, our passengers, and other road users.

When most people go to the DMV, they hope to leave with a permit that allows them to get behind the wheel. For Waymo, the best news is a permit that allows us to get out from behind the wheel. We’re excited to announce that the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has just granted Waymo the first permit in the state to begin driverless testing on public roads.

Our self-driving vehicles just crossed 10 million miles driven on public roads.