After a long hiatus, this blog is back! I took my first couple of robotaxi rides recently and so it is time for a review. How was the experience? And how does everything I have written before stack up to where we currently are in the self-driving world?
Recall that I wrote about a fundamental psychological obstacle to the adoption of self-driving cars. We have to trust our lives to the workings of a machine. This thought makes many people shudder, or at least it made them shudder 6 years ago when I wrote the article.
What would make them lose that shudder? This is what I wrote as hypothetical PM at Waymo: “…I could eliminate the shudder by the sheer weight of statistics. If self-driving cars are on the road for so many years, have driven so many billions of miles and made no mistakes, then surely they can be trusted. Indeed, there is probably some number at which our shudder ceases. “
6 years on this has indeed become reality. Waymo cars have driven sufficient miles successfully so that the shudder is gone!
It is at least gone for me. A couple of days ago I got an email stating that I had been accepted into the Waymo One program and could now order rides. Of course I went right ahead and ordered mine through the Waymo One Android App! My ride took me from the Lower Haight to the Mission in San Francisco on a bright sunny day. The next night I took another ride also from the Lower Haight to the Mission and then a day ride back to the Lower Haight. Here is the review of my experiences.
Ride Ordering: Simple, no different than Uber or Lyft. Enter in your destination, it automatically geo locates the starting location and your ride is set up, just hit confirm to get the car. Car was 5 minutes away, not too long a wait. You are given a car number and license plate.
Like the other ride sharing apps you can see the car approaching on the map.
I followed it getting closer and what a thrill and trip it was to see it approach! It pulled up by turning in towards the curb (but still blocking the lane).
At this point the App informed me that the car was here and I could unlock the door by hitting the “Unlock” button.
Getting In: Hitting unlock released a handle on the rear door.
I had luggage so looked for an “open trunk” button but there was none. Perhaps I just had to manually open it, however the car is a Jaguar SUV and quite spacious so I loaded my luggage into the back seat next to me. I was too excited to care!
Once in, a voice greeted me by my name and reminded me to put on the seat belt. There was a tablet sized screen in front of me with controls to start the ride, pull over and request urgent support.
The Actual Ride: I hit “Start Ride” and we were off! The car wound its way through the streets of San Francisco skillfully.
It was able to go around cars waiting to turn left, get around moving vans and cars stopped in awkward places, making the ride smooth and flowing. It braked and stopped well with a smooth slowdown and plenty of distance. It followed all the laws and obeyed the speed limit.
My night ride was just as impressive, with the car nimbly navigating all kinds of foot and car disruptions on a busy Friday night on 24th St.
The Drop Off: Even while booking the ride the App let me know that the drop off would be a 2min walk away. Apparently the car cannot start and stop at the exact spot you requested, it has to find a ‘safe’ spot where it can turn in. I was dropped off around the corner from my destination leaving me with a 2min walk, and the car stopped in the lane, it didn’t even move to the curb.
When the ride ended the voice instructed me to exit the car and close the door behind me. Once out I noticed the car was just sitting there, hazard lights on, blocking the lane. Then all the door handles came out, which was a bit weird and made me wonder if I had completed the ride correctly. The App however showed that I was done.
Price: The cost for the ride was actually a good 20% more than what Uber was charging for the same journey, which is rather surprising.
Was it worth it?
The Pros:
A Smooth Ride: The drives were smooth and uneventful, the cars were comfortable and I could choose my own music. With Uber you never know; I’ve had a few scary Uber rides in the past. For that matter, whenever I chose an Uber or Lyft I have a slight trace of anxiety in the background - what kind of driver am I going to get? With Waymo, every ride is going to have certain common qualities. This consistency might well be the norm at some point, we will all get used to it and want nothing else. We will feel safe and reassured in that consistency, we won’t have to give it any energy, unlike the Uber ride. This reassurance will become a huge advantage for Waymo.
Successfully Getting Us Past the Fear: It is by itself a remarkable feat that Waymo (and other self driving companies) have gotten us to go past the first instinctive shudder of having to trust the machine with our lives. I had no fear at all getting into the car and none while it was driving.
It helps that I have been a software developer and I know the iterative process by which software is improved. MVPs are always buggy, but six years is a long time for software testing and after a while, with sufficiently good engineers and thorough testing, the bugs get sorted out and things just work.
In addition the ride was on city streets where the speeds are low so the chances of a catastrophic accident are relatively low. City street driving is all Waymo has permission for currently. How would I feel if the ride was at highway speeds? I would still feel a shudder but it would also depend on the route. If the ride was to Google headquarters the shudder would be very mild as the route would be so well mapped out I would have confidence the car would make it without a hitch. For a highway ride to a more obscure location, I don’t know if I would as yet be comfortable getting in the back seat of the car.
Still, when I told friends I took the simpler intra city robo-taxi ride, many shuddered and some called me a brave early adopter. The fear is still there in a lot of people and it is going to take much more adoption and error free miles for it to fully go away.
The Cons:
Inconsistent Pickup and Drop-off: The car will not drop you off exactly at your destination. While the walk is not a big deal, it will be a problem for anyone with mobility issues. In addition it is not guaranteed that the car will pick you up at the exact address either. And unlike an Uber driver you can’t ask the Waymo car to pull into your driveway or any other such adjustment. This also can be serious limitation, restricting the usability of the service.
It is not entirely clear how the car chooses its pickup and drop off point either. On my night ride, for the pickup the car chose to stop in the right most lane of a busy high speed downhill road(Oak St) instead of the actual pickup point on quieter Webster St. This chosen pickup point didn’t feel safe at all, the car was asking to be rear ended.
A Slow Ride: The car follows all the rules and posted speed limits and so it is *slow*. Which human actually drives that way? Where the Waymo will take 15 minutes, the Uber ride will take 12. You might find yourself chafing at the bit on longer rides.
Over Priced: For now prices are showing anywhere from 20-50% more than Uber for the same journey. Yes it is a Jaguar SUV, but there isn’t any option for a less fancy Waymo car. So this is very odd, you would have thought Waymo would have factored in Uber and Lyft pricing before settling on its model. After all, the assumption is that if you don’t have to split the cost with the driver, you can charge much less. However Waymo does have to pay the huge cost of developing this technology.
There is a huge opportunity for Waymo here. Not only can they come in at a lower price they can do away with the surge pricing that Uber and Lyft are notorious for. I am sure someone at Waymo is running the numbers to figure out the proper balance…
Verdict:
All in all then, in spite of the thrill of witnessing such phenomenal technology, this is currently a Sub-Optimal Experience. I am paying 20-50% more for a slower ride, longer wait times and inconsistent pickup and drop off. This is not worth it. However these are early days and much will be improved so I am going to keep checking in every few months or so.
Having said all that there is no question that this is a revolutionary technology and huge step forward for humanity. Machines (eventually) just do things better than humans. Chess, Go are prime examples. Human beings are prone to moods and distractions, machines are not. While some people like driving, human driving is work and fraught with danger. Every year hundreds of thousands of people all over the world get into car accidents and suffer all kinds of injuries up to and including death.
Think of a world where all the cars are self-driving and talking to each other. There will be no accidents at all. This is miraculous. So hats off to the folks at Waymo and Cruise and every other self-driving car company that has come this far. Your work is incredible.
Indeed it would be a privilege to work on a project like this. Without expressing any discontent with my current and future employers, my current work is fantastic, I am thoroughly enjoying it (and Waymo isn’t hiring anyway), but it would be a dream job for me to work at Waymo and be a part of this historical, ground breaking revolution.