In November 2017, Waymo announced that it had begun testing driverless cars without a safety driver in the driver position; however, there was still an employee in the car. In October 2018, Waymo announced that its test vehicles had traveled in automated mode for over , increasing by about per month. In December 2018, Waymo was the first to commercialize a fully autonomous taxi service in the US, in Phoenix, Arizona. In October 2020, Waymo launched a geo-fenced driverless ride hailing service in Phoenix. The cars are being monitored in real-time by a team of remote engineers, and there are cases where the remote engineers need to intervene.