Longtime Chron tech writer Dwight Silverman took a ride in a Waymo robotaxi and wrote about the experience.
When Waymo began service in Houston on Feb. 24, its vehicles had already become a common sight in the city. When they first appeared, a safety driver — or “autonomous specialist,” as Waymo calls them — was at the wheel. But over time, I’d increasingly see them with no drivers, but also sans passengers. Later, I’d spot them parked on public streets, their sensors rotating furiously as they idled. In fact, one sat outside the driveway of the condo community where I live for days at a time.
When Waymo launched, I immediately downloaded the app and signed up for an account, which put me on a waitlist. That’s the only way to get into the early-service period — and no, current riders don’t have invitations to hand out. After about two weeks, I was in.
My lovely wife and I needed to be in downtown Houston on a Saturday when a cluster of big events made parking a challenge — the No Kings protest rally, the Bayou City Art Festival, the March Madness college basketball tournament and Astros opening day weekend were all in full swing. It was a perfect opportunity to try Waymo.
The company’s service works like any other ride-hailing entity: Fire up its app, tell Waymo your current location and destination, and you’re told how long it will take before the car arrives. You can track its whereabouts in the app, and you pay an upfront price, which is based on distance and demand. (In Austin, as well as Atlanta, Waymo riders use the Uber app instead.)
When it appears and slows to a stop — not always right where you’re standing — your initials appear on a dome on the car’s roof. Although Waymo doesn’t yet carry Houston riders to and from our airports (it just started service to San Antonio’s airport on Tuesday), this feature would come in handy when a gaggle of its cars are waiting for travelers who’ve summoned them. If you allow the Waymo app to access your smartphone’s Bluetooth feature, the doors unlock and their handles extend as you approach.
Inside, the vehicle is comfortable and luxurious — after all, it’s a Jag SUV. We sat in the back, but riders can also use the front passenger seat; the driver’s seat is off-limits. Rear riders have a touchscreen between the seats, while front passengers see one on the dash. As a recording tells you want to expect, how to summon help and some basic rules, a button on the screens invites you to “Start ride.” Tap it, and off you go.
The most remarkable thing I can say about our rides in the Waymo vehicles is that they were … unremarkable. The car’s movements were smooth, with no jerky motions or unnecessary hesitations. Its driving and reactions to traffic conditions looked and felt very human. The Waymo Driver is controlled by computers and artificial intelligence in the car itself, responding to multiple sensor types: radar, lidar (like radar, but with lasers), cameras and audio. The in-cabin screens show you what the car is seeing, and what it knows about its surroundings. For example, if a car in front of you has its turn signal blinking, you’ll see it in the representation of that vehicle on the touchscreen.
You also have some control over the cabin. The touchscreens and the app let you set the AC in the car, adjust the seats and you if you are a Spotify or YouTube Music user, you can play your own tunes from your phone (Apple Music is not yet supported). If you have questions or concerns, you can tap the screen to summon help.
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I will keep using Waymo in Houston. The experience is so much better than a taxi or rideshare, and less expensive. The approximately four-mile Waymo rides I booked averaged under $18 each, about $10 less than an Uber at the time, and of course there’s no tip. While I’m not too worried about safety, there is the sobering notion that if autonomous taxis become the norm, those who drive others for a living will be out of a job.
When I asked [Waymo spokesperson Chris] Bonelli about this, he contended that Waymo will create jobs. People will be needed to maintain cars, clean the sensors, charge the vehicles and more. Of course, that potential workforce is dwarfed in size by the thousands of rideshare and taxi drivers in Houston whose livelihood is threatened in an autonomous future. When I pointed that out, Bonelli had nothing more to add.
See here for more on Waymo’s arrival in Houston, and read the rest, it’s a gift link. We are not regular rideshare users – the occasional dropoff at or ride home from the airport is our most frequent use case. I prefer taking Metro to places like downtown and the Medical Center. When the day comes that I’m not a safe driver anymore, I’ll probably adapt to the new paradigms. Until then, this is more of a curiosity and a sometime alternative to renting a car when we travel. I will say that I noticed a Waymo seemingly parked on a street in my neighborhood very early in the morning a few weeks ago. I assumed it had been there all night and it makes me wonder if this is the solution Waymo is adopting for the “what do we do with these things when there’s no demand for them” question. I’d love to have a more definitive answer to that, since I doubt they have storage lots or that the cars are just roaming the streets aimlessly all night.
In other “questions about robotaxis we should know more about but don’t”, there’s this.
In a letter shared with Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tesla admitted that its robotaxis are sometimes driven remotely by human operators, Wired reports. Competing self-driving car companies sometimes rely on human operators to tell robotaxi software how to get itself unstuck, but letting operators actually drive those cars remotely is more unusual.
“As a redundancy measure in rare cases … [remote assistance operators] are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted,” Karen Steakley, Tesla’s director of public policy and business development, shared in a letter to Markey. In those situations, operators are reportedly able to take over Tesla’s robotaxis when they’re moving at speeds around 2mph or less, and then drive the car at up to 10mph if software permits it.
Engadget has contacted Tesla to confirm the details shared in Steakley’s letter. We’ll update the article if we hear back.
As Wired notes, that’s a bit different than how other self-driving car companies handle human intervention. For example, Waymo’s Driver software can call on human help — Waymo calls them “fleet response” — to offer context and answer questions to help it navigate complicated driving situations. The company claims these workers never drive the robotaxi themselves, but they are able to see the car’s environment through its sensors to help it get unstuck. Self-driving car companies typically avoid remote operation, Wired writes, because technical limitations like latency and the limited perspective of a robotaxi’s sensors can make it hard to drive them easily and safely.
I’m coming to the opinion that we should start treating robotaxis like public transportation and regulate them as we would if it were our local metro transit agency. That means full transparency on pricing, utilization, accidents and crime, future plans, and so on. The idea that we could just sort of morph from a nation where most people owned their own vehicles to one where we’re all or mostly all essentially subscribing to vehicular services seems to me like something we ought to avoid, or at least have some control over. Add this to the long list of things we really need to do when we have a functional government again.
“I will keep using Waymo in Houston. The experience is so much better than a taxi or rideshare, and less expensive.”
well, gee. everything gets less expensive when you remove the humans. cf journalism. i guess if chron writers want to eliminate labor costs, i can start getting my news from a bot, too. what could go wrong?
I’m wondering if service areas will be “redlined” in terms of off-limit zip codes, types of businesses, vacant lots, etc. What are the protocols for dealing with health emergencies of passengers? Will there be accommodations for passengers with mobility issues? Are the vehicles pro-actively sanitized, tended to on an arbitrary schedule, or in response to customer complaints? Will they follow the “turn around, don’t drown” maxim during street and underpass flooding events?