I arrived in LA this week just days after Waymo had opened its driverless taxi service to all-comers (it had been operating in the city, with a wait-list system, since March).
Part of me had reservations - and you’ll hear weird fight-or-flight breathing in some of my clips below - but as a tech journalist, I had to dive into the brave new world of robotaxis.
Here are five things that struck me about the trip.
I asked both Uber and Waymo’s apps for a quote to get me from a cafe in Venice Beach - where myself and other journos had been lunching with a Starlink rep - to the hotel I was staying at in Hollywood.
I’d read Waymo was priced head-to-head with Uber. Waymo has no drivers taking a cut of the fare, and its vehicles can operate nearly around the clock (and of course with no danger of driver fatigue) bar Roomba-style autopilot visits to charging stations.
But it does cost a reported US$100,000 (NZ$170,000) per vehicle to kit a Waymo out with lidar (light detection and ranging) and other sensors to make a real-time 3D map of its environment, and there are technicians to pay to monitor everything. Parent company Alphabet (Google’s holding company) recently invested another US$5 billion for expansion.
But in my case, the estimates - generated within half a minute of each other - were quite different.
Uber’s app quoted US$50.96 ($85.55) for an UberX for what would be a roughly hour-long trip through relatively free-flowing early afternoon traffic or US$60.51 ($101.58) for an UberXL, which would be closer in size and ride comfort to Waymo (which only uses the Jaguar iPace - that is, Jaguar’s electric SUV). Both prices were billed as “lower than usual”.
The Waymo One app quoted US$44.71 ($75.05). Sign-up for Waymo’s app took barely a minute, incidentally, given I could log-on using my Google account and choose Apple Pay for billing. Android Pay is also an option.
In the event, my Waymo trip - which involved no delays or congestion - was billed at US$46.39 ($77.87) for 13.4 miles (21.6km) over 65 minutes.
Waymo says more than 300,000 people registered for its waitlist, and it has only a reported 100 vehicles on the road in LA.
When I emailed the firm, a spokesman replied “We have over 100 cars in service in LA and over 700 across all of our Waymo One cities”. The firm operates in San Francisco, LA and Phoenix. For context, Uber has around 50,000 drivers in LA.
Given the small number of vehicles to registered riders, and the novelty of a service that had only been available to all-comers since November 12, I initially thought I would have little chance of nabbing a ride - at least without an Uber-after-Coldplay duration of waiting.
But it turned out a Waymo could arrive within three minutes.
It seemed Angelinos weren’t queuing up for the driverless experience, at that moment, or various other times I checked in. The longest wait-time I saw quoted was seven minutes. (On November 12, Waymo said its fleet of more than 700 vehicles completes over 150,000 rides weekly in Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.)
By the time I’d scrambled out the front door of the cafe, the app said my Waymo was already there, just metres away. There was a hand instruction in the app to “walk left” (nice touch, better than the “south-west” used by other apps) and it was only tens of metres away - but I could not find it on the main road.
Instead - as I discovered about three minutes into the five-minute wait time - my Waymo had driven into the customer parking lot hidden behind the cafe - a relatively tight squeeze to drive in and out of. I could have sped up my search by using the option in the app to get the robotaxi to honk its horn.
In the clip above, the black car parked has a driver, who was eyeing the Waymo, which had plonked itself in the middle of the car park rather than taking a space.
It left the parked driver just enough room to manoeuvre out around it, but she was in no mood to try.
I gave her a “sorry” shrug and hit “Unlock” on the app to get into the back of the Waymo then tapped “Start ride” on the touchscreen between the two front passenger seats. A voice from the Waymo app - running on the front touchscreen - told me to buckle up. We were away.
My Waymo stuck to regular roads, which I was rather relieved at, to be honest. The company - which did its first public road tests nearly a decade ago - still avoids freeways (motorways).
So, for now, many shorter and cheaper routes are off the table for the robotaxi firm.
“We do not yet serve public riders on the freeway, but we are performing fully autonomous freeway testing with employees in Phoenix and San Francisco,” the Waymo spokesman said.
On public roads, Waymo says while there have been incidents, its crash stats prove its automated cars are safer than a human driver over the same number of miles.
There’s also been a bit of public safety panic, at least on TikTok, with a video going viral of someone standing in front of a Waymo - causing it to automatically stop - then spray painting the windows. It’s disturbing, but there’s also nothing to stop the same thing happening to a taxi with a human driver while it’s, say, stuck in a queue at some lights.
My Waymo was ignored by a cop waiting opposite at the same intersection, which I took as a positive sign.
I had been planning to use Waymo to go from my hotel to LAX. But in most cities, Waymo isn’t licensed for airport drop-offs. Security reasons have been cited. And you can imagine nerves about a driverless vehicle heading toward a terrorist-risk zone.
It’s a nuisance for travellers and an obvious commercial limitation for the company to miss out on what’s a cash-cow route.
“We currently serve pick up and drop offs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and are in active discussions with airports in other cities for potential service,” the Waymo spokesman said.
After waiting for ongoing traffic to clear - at a turn with no lights - my Waymo executed a turn just a second or two after the last car had passed, in the manner of an assertive, no-messing-around human driver in a hurry to a meeting (if obeying all the road rules).
It accelerated as soon as the lights turned green and quickly matched the top speed of the traffic flow (which was between 31 miles an hour (50km/h) and 33mph. A brisk acceleration by an automated system is nothing new - my 2003 Honda Odyssey would oomph up to full speed when in cruise control.
I should also add that it eased up quite gently behind other cars if they were stopped at a red light.
I didn’t encounter any jaywalkers (American pedestrians are far more likely to obey the road rules than Kiwis) but a reader who tried Waymo in Phoenix sent me a pic of their vehicle stopping for people crossing the road.
After leaning into the front to adjust the aircon, I got thrown - or at least lurched - back into the backseat as my Waymo briskly accelerated. No harm was done, and I should have stayed buckled up. The Waymo app lets you change the music and other settings.
The driver’s seat is off-limits, for obvious reasons, but a Waymo can take up to four passengers: one in the front and three in the back.
The only thing close to an incident during the 65-minute trip was when an emergency services vehicle came barreling in the opposite direction, lights flashing and siren wailing.
My Waymo happened to be behind another Waymo at the time. You can see in the video clip above that both slowed and pulled toward the side of the road briefly - a conservative move, which turned out to be unnecessary, but which I appreciated as a passenger.
But it seems a Waymo can sometimes find it awkward to navigate a more complex situation.
During a recent trip to San Francisco, my colleague Peter Griffin said he took three Waymo rides with no issues but reported:
“Another Kiwi visiting San Francisco at the same time had an altogether different and slightly alarming experience in a Waymo. The car came up behind a fire truck parked awkwardly in the road.
“The woman recounted that the Waymo seemed unsure of what to do and made numerous short adjustments, as though flustered. Then it manoeuvred around the fire truck and came to a stop - on tram lines. All ended well, with the car regaining its composure and carrying on.”
It’s just disconcerting to have no driver. I could wind down my window, but the doors were locked and I knew the trip would take an hour or so. However, there are “pull over” and “edit trip” buttons on the app if you want to abbreviate things for any reason.
There’s also an emergency calling button on the app, plus the option to call for support or access chat support. I tried the chat and got an instant reply.
I had a general feeling of existential dread, and my heart raced a little at each intersection, but I had no actual problem to report. The ride was most remarkable for its unremarkableness.
The drop-off was unexpectedly brisk.
After pulling up in the valet drop-off zone outside my hotel, the Waymo’s robo-voice told me to pull the door handle twice - “the first pull unlocks, the second opens the door.”
The voice warned me about an oncoming car - which would have been handy if I’d been getting out on the roadside of the vehicle.
I took a quick clip of the Waymo after we’d pulled in, then figured I would end the trip in the app then take some footage of it gently gliding away. But it turned out the double-door pull was the trip-ender and I barely got a couple of seconds of video as the Waymo zoomed off just seconds after I’d hit the sidewalk. It had places to go and humans to pick up.
Not any time soon in the land where Telsa’s Full Self Driving mode is only available in a limited form, and requires a driver at the wheel at all times at any time.
Law and regulatory changes would be required.
Even in the US, things have moved very slowly. Waymo began its first public tests in 2015.
And the commercial and technical challenges are considerable.
Back in 2019, Elon Musk - something of a doer - told Tesla investors his firm would have robotaxis by 2020. Last month, Musk demo’d a Telsla Cybercab and said it would be rolled out in California and Texas next year. If it arrives - and at the promised US$30,000 - it would undercut the reported cost of kitting out a Jaguar iPace as a Waymo vehicle by more than two-thirds.
And back in 2016, Uber’s then CEO Travis Kalanick said his firm would have 75,000 robotaxis by 2019.
The latest from Uber is that it could do a trial in 2025.
Uber also says that it’s partnering with Waymo as the Alphabet-owned firm expands into Atlanta and Austin - but the partnership is at the modest level where you can order a Waymo using Uber’s app.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
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