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Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's podcast about the business of startups.

Today is Friday, January 16th. I'm Kirsten Koresak, Transportation and Climate Editor here at TechCrunch.

And I'm joined by Anthony Haw, our weekend editor and senior reporter Sean O'Kane, I, you two.

Anthony, you're in the city, in New York City specifically. And I'm wondering, based on some news that

happened this week, if you've seen any Waymo's testing in and around New York City at all.

I don't necessarily get to every single part of the city. So maybe they're somewhere, but no, I haven't seen any myself.

Now, as I understand it, there has been some news about Robotaxis getting approved in New York State, but New York City is somewhat accepted from that.

Yeah, so basically, so New York just in general has been very, very, very difficult for Robotoxy companies to get into, in part because there's this funny state law, which makes a lot of sense for human drivers, by the way, that basically says, hey, human drivers, you have to have one hand on the steering wheel at all times.

You can't go no hands.

But now with the innovation around robotoxies in which you wouldn't have a human driver

theoretically behind a steering wheel, there is no hand to put on the steering wheel.

So this week, the governor in her state of the state address did touch on how she's going to put together a proposal.

It's supposed to be in the executive budget that's going to essentially allow robotaxies

with some guardrails to scale commercially in the state. So they would have an exemption.

They'd be able to do that. Separately, the city has been working with Waymo and has given them a permit, an exemption that allows

them to test and operate in the city, not commercially, though.

And that permit was just extended to the end of March.

Do you have a sense of where those tests are happening?

Well, I do actually because another one of our coworkers, which is funny because it is not in New York

City, but Zach Whitaker said he's seen that in Jersey City. So I'm not really sure what's going on

if maybe there's a depot over there and then they're coming somehow into New York City.

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