On a recent trip to San Francisco my friend Tassos treated us to Waymo’s robotaxi. When I first saw the Jaguar SUV silently slither up and down the San Francisco hills, I thought , “No way will I get in one of those”. But when I saw more driver-less taxis throughout the day, and they weren’t bursting into flames and maiming people on sidewalks, I had another think. I had to try it.
Waymo, the autonomous company owned by Alphabet since 2009, is the only game in town in the robotaxi arms race. According to Danny Lewis and the Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Everything, in October 2023, its nearest competitor, GM’s Cruise, inadvertently ran over a woman in San Francisco. The woman is still alive, but is permanently disabled. GM, saddled by fines, lost the ability to operate Cruise in California which led to GM scraping their robotaxi initiative. Other competitors nipping at Waymo’s heels are Amazon’s Zoox, and Tesla, but with 400 additional taxis in LA and 400 in Phoenix, AZ, and 150,000 paid weekly rides, up from 10,000 a week in August 2023, Waymo is the clear leader in the robotaxi field.
Although there are still hurdles to overcome, like robotaxis freezing in downtown streets and clogging traffic, cars honking through the night, cars driving the wrong way down a one-way street, and harassment of customers from hostile passersby. In fact the harassment got so bad in February, 2024 a Waymo car was vandalized by angry residents and set on fire.
Fortunately things have quieted down since then and Waymo, with more than 300 vehicles, has been accepted grudgingly into the San Francisco landscape. I felt quite safe in the car and I think most riders feel the same way. Positive word of mouth around the city have made early adapters of former skeptics like me. There will always be critics, some think Waymo encourages us to dive deeper into our tech-like-opium dens to further isolate ourselves from other humans, but as someone who spent his adult life on New York City subways, and is currently driving on the southern California freeways, I am a huge fan.
Waymo plans to partner with Uber in Austin, TX and Atlanta, GA in the summer of 2025. Let the games begin!