I didn’t think I’d be so pro Waymo but anecdotally I had a fantastic experience with one recently.
I was at a music show very late ~1-2am in SF and walked out to grab an uber to the airbnb I was staying at. I kept getting assigned an uber, then I’d wait 10 minutes, then they’d cancel. Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes, mind you I even resorted to calling Lyfts at the same time and nothing bit. Then I say screw it and download Waymo. 1 minute and it’s accepted my ride, and I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot. 3 minutes and it picks me up. The car is clean, quiet, I can play my own music in it via Spotify, and it’s driving honestly more safely than some uber drivers I’ve had in SF. It’s one of the few things where the end result actually lives up to the promise from a tech company.
I took one in SF on a rainy, dark night when I was visiting a year ago. I was pretty impressed. That's not an easy city to navigate even on a sunny day and it did fine.
Uber has over time had to relax a lot of the marketplace management practices that reduce the incidence of experiences like this. Can’t penalize drivers for cancelling / ignoring requests because it starts to erode their argument around drivers being independent contractors. So of course the quality of the product degrades to the point where now it’s going to accelerate the move away from human drivers.
This is what radicalized me. “Uber is 4 minutes away” so I call them, and it tells me it’s trying to find drivers for the next 6-8 minutes, then a driver is selected and they are 11 minutes away, then they sit at their location for 4-5 minutes, then they start moving toward me, then they’re 5 minutes away and cancel and uber changes to finding me a ride. Infuriating.
Seeing a lot of people confused on why drivers do this. What I was told after it happened to me is that I was getting an Uber at the busiest time of the week (Friday afternoon) and going a few miles (I lived near an airport at the time). Others were going much further, so drivers wanted those. But they can't deny the ride, that dings their account. So they do that garbage to annoy everybody instead. Meaning, maybe, your ride just wasn't worth it for them. Robots don't have salaries but also Waymo I guess has no systematic issue that causes such a mess in the first place
If you're playing it via Spotify, it's not your music, it's Spotify's. Waymo is cool technology but I am disappointed at how the app requires a Google account plus access to google play services on an Android phone, and how the streaming music feature requires some kind of protocol that only Spotify and some proprietary Google music app support. All of my music is stored on a personal server that I stream to my phone via Jellyfin, and this does not work in a Waymo.
The same exact thing happened to me last time I was in San Fran. I wanted uber because it was cheaper. Ended up taking a Waymo for more because no one else would take me.
Not saying this HAS to happen. But I remember when Ubers were clean, quiet, cheap too. I think you are just looking at a product before the enshittification, when they still have to pretend they care about your comfort.
"I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot"
I won't be at all surprised when they start calculating their profits in real-time, if they aren't already, and cancelling or delaying trips that are deemed unprofitable in the moment. They are robots after all.
The effectiveness with which AVs have been able to test and spread despite local municipalities being fairly luddite about them does provide positive evidence for the idea that states are the right level of government for many of these decisions. If this had been entirely up to Bay Area municipalities it would have been infeasible, and this outcome and the lives consequently saved will be due to state-level decision-makers being able to make better decisions than local municipal decision-makers.
If the urban sprawl of the Bay Area were (correctly, in my opinion) represented as a single fused city-county like Tokyo, I think we would have better governance, but highly fragmented municipalities means we have a lot of free-rider vetos.
I don't see any reason that individual Bay Area cities cannot pass laws against Waymo operating there. Why they would do so is a different matter. I'm hopeful though.
This is super awesome but to set expectations it appears that Waymo is quite limited by fleet capacity in all of its current operating zones, so as a practical matter it may be months or years before it operates in all these areas.
If you're interested in this stuff I highly recommend this podcast, not affiliated with it I genuinely think it's a great source to hear about the behind the scenes of fleet operations to meet demand:
https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomy-markets/
Looking forward to the highway expansion next. I had to get from mountain view to san francisco yesterday, and waymo was _able_ to do this trip, it was going to take several hours and get routed up el camino real the whole way. Luckily I was standing very close to a caltrain station when I needed the ride, so i just caltrained, and then waymo'd from the SF station to where i needed to be.
BTW, this is the way: Assuming nothing exceptional, with the every-half-hour or better frequency, I use Waymo to get to a Caltrain station, take Caltrain to a nearby stop, and then Waymo from there to destination.
Highway expansion is already here in many areas! Waymo has been laying the groundwork for this rapid rollout for so many years and it's amazing to see it all come together.
Are you a Waymo tester? I haven't gotten Bay Area access yet despite it being released, and when I checked with support they were just like "oh we lied, it's for trusted testers only."
I dug up my email and found they'd sent me the tester application form like a year ago and I just forgot to fill it out, so maybe they'll let me in sometime.
(Also, the chat claimed the support agent was named Al Pacino. Unless it was a pun on AI and I just couldn't tell with the font.)
Dang, is it really worth flying LAX and spending like $600 on round trip car rides, compared to flying non-direct to SAN and having a little layover somewhere?
I was skeptical about Waymo but then I had the opportunity to ride a Waymo and an Uber the same day. The Waymo trip was uneventful but the uber driver drifted into oncoming traffic then jerked the wheel back and said “whoah,” when I alerted him.
It made me realize that even though Waymo is not at level 5 yet, neither are a lot of Uber drivers…
It's been a long time coming, but Waymo is doing it. Waymo is scaleable and on the march! They've been announcing plans to roll out in new cities every month or 2 all year, and by the end of 2026 they'll be testing or offering the public rides over 30 metropolitan areas.
I'm most curious to see how they do in the winter city of Minneapolis over the next several months.
I’m looking forward to the day when the cost of taking one of these falls to somewhere 20% above the cost of fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle, making it incredibly cheap to take a ride anywhere you’d reasonably want to be driven to.
Uber estimated that it costs Waymo $2/mile to operate.
Google says they charge $1.60 to $2.60 a mile, depending on location and demand, so Waymo is already almost certainly at the price you claim you'd be taking it.
I think you dramatically underestimate how much it actually costs to operate a car. Most people think they pay $0 to garage their car, for instance, since the cost was rolled into the price of their house purchase and mostly invisible. But it isn't $0 to a business. Likewise, very few people depreciate their car over just 5 years. Or clean it inside and out every single day.
Here's one attempt at costs for Waymo that finds it costs them about $60,000 a year to operate a single car. Also notice the comments talking about how the per vehicle price is high, how that flows into higher insurance, and all kinds of other things.
Maybe someday there will be a discount AV taxi company using 10 year old beat up Honda Civics that only get cleaned once a month and provide extremely barebones support to pull the costs down to $1/mile. That's a 50% drop in costs from today, so hard to see it coming very quickly. But that's still pretty expensive to be using as a daily commuter!
And note that the IRS per mile rate is $0.70/mile. It's not perfect but it is a decent third party estimate of the true cost of operating a car. Hard to see any taxi company charging anything less than that. So a 10 mile commute every day is still going to cost you $280/month in an AV taxi for the foreseeable future.
Waymo has so far been awesome, can't imagine choosing an Uber/Lyft over a Waymo when both are available options. I wonder how much they are bottlenecked by vehicle production though.
There's a huge difference between a robot who accepts all rides, and a two sided market as in the ride hailing apps. Without the factor of drivers picking their rides, the relatively small Waymo fleet has an outsize impact. The whole fleet is available 24/7/365. I would bet that Waymos rule the night.
I rode in one of these in Phoenix in June, loved the experience! Had to go to a pharmacy so purposely picked one a half hour across the city so I could just watch the car perform. Felt like the future (though it did glitch once). Made a sudden turn off the road into a parking lot, did a lap of the outside of the parking lot, and exited back onto the same road to continue on. Must have thought something was blocking the road and made a detour around it? Other than that it seemed pretty flawless.
My general experience with Waymos and safety is that while they are generally quite safe and communicative drivers (They have a pedestrian yeild indicator that should be required by law) they tend to create safety issues because people drive stupidly around them. A lot of SF drivers seem to see them, think I know better, and then proceed to do something dumb.
I'm not really sure how to fix this problem.
Also if any Waymo engineers are reading this please make the pedestrian yeild indicator icon visible on the front of the LIDAR. In narrow streets the front is much more visible to pedestrians than the sides as the LIDAR is pretty far back on the car.
First used Waymo in Phoenix. It was a decent experience. The funny thing was watching it handle parallel parking. I mentioned it to the wife - self driving with parkinsons.
This last weekend, we were in the city (San Francisco) and literally drove by a Waymo trying to park and the wife started laughing - "you are right".
This is so cool to see. Saw tons of Waymo in LA/Santa Monica area when I was there in October. Very excited to see them expand basically all through SoCal!
I believe that in 20 years there will be cities (probably not in America) where all cars are autonomous. There will be no red lights, no parking lots, less congestion, fewer accidents.
Also, you forgot to mention the silence, nearly zero cost infrastructure, nearly zero environmental impact, and immense population-wide health benefits—and therefore healthcare cost savings.
why is there an approved map? like i get having a pilot somewhere but once that goes well (and we're way past that point), why isn't it just blanket approval everywhere. Why would one county be allowed waymos but not another.
I get that they might not be approved in the high sierras but just make that a deny list not allow list. Or even just deny the specific conditions you're worried about (snow).
There's an approved map because the approval process requires the manufacturer to specify both areas and conditions they are applying for, and documents supporting that the vehicle is ready to be operated autonomously in those areas and conditions (which doesn't just include technical readiness, but also administrative readiness in the form of things like a law enforcement interaction plan, etc.)
> like i get having a pilot somewhere but once that goes well (and we're way past that point), why isn't it just blanket approval everywhere.
Because “everywhere” isn't a uniform domain (Waymo is kind of way out in one tail of the distribution in terms of both the geographical range and range of conditions they have applied for and been approved to operate in, other AV manufacturers are in much tinier zones, and narrow road/weather conditions.) And because for some AV manufacturers (if there is one that can demonstrate they don't need this, they'd probably have an easier lift getting broader approvals) part of readiness to deploy (or test) in an area is detailed, manufacturer specific mapping/surveying of the roads.
More of the state is not allowed than is... at least by geography.
Also, there's a practical element. If I have to specify where they can't go, the default position is they can go anywhere... if I inadvertently leave an area out of my black-list where it really ought to exist: the default is "permission granted". With a white-list, the worst case is a forgotten or neglected area can't be operated in as a default and the AV provider will have an interest in correcting.
But also politics. It's a very different message to say we're going to white-list a given AV operator to exist in different areas vs. black-listing them from certain areas.
willio58|3 months ago
I was at a music show very late ~1-2am in SF and walked out to grab an uber to the airbnb I was staying at. I kept getting assigned an uber, then I’d wait 10 minutes, then they’d cancel. Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes, mind you I even resorted to calling Lyfts at the same time and nothing bit. Then I say screw it and download Waymo. 1 minute and it’s accepted my ride, and I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot. 3 minutes and it picks me up. The car is clean, quiet, I can play my own music in it via Spotify, and it’s driving honestly more safely than some uber drivers I’ve had in SF. It’s one of the few things where the end result actually lives up to the promise from a tech company.
krat0sprakhar|3 months ago
This is such a common problem in SF (esp in odd times / from the airport). Waymo has been a lifesaver in these situations.
bitpush|3 months ago
From my experience, lot of people actively seek out Waymo if it is available.
davidw|3 months ago
ianmabie|3 months ago
ohyoutravel|3 months ago
mlmonkey|3 months ago
Neywiny|3 months ago
JuniperMesos|3 months ago
kilroy123|3 months ago
poszlem|3 months ago
gcheong|3 months ago
I won't be at all surprised when they start calculating their profits in real-time, if they aren't already, and cancelling or delaying trips that are deemed unprofitable in the moment. They are robots after all.
arjie|3 months ago
If the urban sprawl of the Bay Area were (correctly, in my opinion) represented as a single fused city-county like Tokyo, I think we would have better governance, but highly fragmented municipalities means we have a lot of free-rider vetos.
BurningFrog|3 months ago
jerlam|3 months ago
xnx|3 months ago
cyberrock|3 months ago
kfarr|3 months ago
If you're interested in this stuff I highly recommend this podcast, not affiliated with it I genuinely think it's a great source to hear about the behind the scenes of fleet operations to meet demand: https://www.roadtoautonomy.com/autonomy-markets/
(Edit) I prefer using the apple podcast app, here's a direct link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/autonomy-markets/id177...
jeffbee|3 months ago
hackernewds|3 months ago
pfooti|3 months ago
CaliforniaKarl|3 months ago
CamelCaseName|3 months ago
astrange|3 months ago
I dug up my email and found they'd sent me the tester application form like a year ago and I just forgot to fill it out, so maybe they'll let me in sometime.
(Also, the chat claimed the support agent was named Al Pacino. Unless it was a pun on AI and I just couldn't tell with the font.)
kylehotchkiss|3 months ago
bob_theslob646|3 months ago
xp84|3 months ago
VanTheBrand|3 months ago
It made me realize that even though Waymo is not at level 5 yet, neither are a lot of Uber drivers…
Fricken|3 months ago
I'm most curious to see how they do in the winter city of Minneapolis over the next several months.
SkyPuncher|3 months ago
dijipiji|3 months ago
njarboe|3 months ago
epicureanideal|3 months ago
freddie_mercury|3 months ago
Uber estimated that it costs Waymo $2/mile to operate.
Google says they charge $1.60 to $2.60 a mile, depending on location and demand, so Waymo is already almost certainly at the price you claim you'd be taking it.
I think you dramatically underestimate how much it actually costs to operate a car. Most people think they pay $0 to garage their car, for instance, since the cost was rolled into the price of their house purchase and mostly invisible. But it isn't $0 to a business. Likewise, very few people depreciate their car over just 5 years. Or clean it inside and out every single day.
Here's one attempt at costs for Waymo that finds it costs them about $60,000 a year to operate a single car. Also notice the comments talking about how the per vehicle price is high, how that flows into higher insurance, and all kinds of other things.
https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1il5d5i/unit_costs_p...
Maybe someday there will be a discount AV taxi company using 10 year old beat up Honda Civics that only get cleaned once a month and provide extremely barebones support to pull the costs down to $1/mile. That's a 50% drop in costs from today, so hard to see it coming very quickly. But that's still pretty expensive to be using as a daily commuter!
And note that the IRS per mile rate is $0.70/mile. It's not perfect but it is a decent third party estimate of the true cost of operating a car. Hard to see any taxi company charging anything less than that. So a 10 mile commute every day is still going to cost you $280/month in an AV taxi for the foreseeable future.
Tade0|3 months ago
And if not Waymo and its car, then perhaps autonomous buses. There's already a shortage of bus drivers in my city and it's not getting any smaller.
OGEnthusiast|3 months ago
Zigurd|3 months ago
tcdent|3 months ago
Without traffic, at highway speeds, it would take you almost four hours to travel from the North end to the South end.
HPMOR|3 months ago
51Cards|3 months ago
int0x29|3 months ago
I'm not really sure how to fix this problem.
Also if any Waymo engineers are reading this please make the pedestrian yeild indicator icon visible on the front of the LIDAR. In narrow streets the front is much more visible to pedestrians than the sides as the LIDAR is pretty far back on the car.
bix6|3 months ago
https://www.motortrend.com/news/waymo-zeekr-rt-autonomous-ev...
ElijahLynn|3 months ago
ra7|3 months ago
jmspring|3 months ago
This last weekend, we were in the city (San Francisco) and literally drove by a Waymo trying to park and the wife started laughing - "you are right".
FireBeyond|3 months ago
__grob|3 months ago
siliconc0w|3 months ago
visioninmyblood|3 months ago
mvkel|3 months ago
janalsncm|3 months ago
Mawr|3 months ago
In 20 years? Here's a 7 year old video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
Also, you forgot to mention the silence, nearly zero cost infrastructure, nearly zero environmental impact, and immense population-wide health benefits—and therefore healthcare cost savings.
alooPotato|3 months ago
I get that they might not be approved in the high sierras but just make that a deny list not allow list. Or even just deny the specific conditions you're worried about (snow).
dragonwriter|3 months ago
> like i get having a pilot somewhere but once that goes well (and we're way past that point), why isn't it just blanket approval everywhere.
Because “everywhere” isn't a uniform domain (Waymo is kind of way out in one tail of the distribution in terms of both the geographical range and range of conditions they have applied for and been approved to operate in, other AV manufacturers are in much tinier zones, and narrow road/weather conditions.) And because for some AV manufacturers (if there is one that can demonstrate they don't need this, they'd probably have an easier lift getting broader approvals) part of readiness to deploy (or test) in an area is detailed, manufacturer specific mapping/surveying of the roads.
throwaway48476|3 months ago
sbuttgereit|3 months ago
Also, there's a practical element. If I have to specify where they can't go, the default position is they can go anywhere... if I inadvertently leave an area out of my black-list where it really ought to exist: the default is "permission granted". With a white-list, the worst case is a forgotten or neglected area can't be operated in as a default and the AV provider will have an interest in correcting.
But also politics. It's a very different message to say we're going to white-list a given AV operator to exist in different areas vs. black-listing them from certain areas.
redwood|3 months ago
eduction|3 months ago
pimlottc|3 months ago
throwaway48476|3 months ago
jonny_eh|3 months ago
JumpCrisscross|3 months ago
alooPotato|3 months ago
tonypapousek|3 months ago
Mawr|3 months ago
cindyllm|3 months ago
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