It feels a little naïve at this point to be aghast and agog over Waymo.
The driverless taxi service, which began autonomous operations in Phoenix six years ago, is coming to San Diego as you may have heard.
Or seen, actually. The sleek misty blue Ojai edition – manufactured not by a carmaker you’d readily recognize, but by Zeekr, a Chinese brand – has been visible, meandering over parts of town for months, and even more so in recent weeks.
That’s because the service will launch soon in a distinct zone, about 40 square miles, that stretches from Pacific Beach to most of Point Loma along the coast and through Mission Valley, Uptown and downtown, extending south to Barrio Logan. The map is not yet for public consumption, but if an image somewhat reminiscent of Iowa was superimposed along I-8 stretching between those boundaries, you wouldn’t be too far off.
There won’t be airport or freeway access in the early going, but Waymo has been working that prescribed service area, fine tuning its calibrations and preparing for riders.
One of whom, recently, was me.
And honestly, I wanted to feel a little aghast and agog. I haven’t traveled recently to any of the big cities where the service is already available, such as San Francisco, Phoenix, Miami or Houston, and if I’m in L.A., I have my car.
The ride, from Balboa Park – we traveled along the boundary between University Heights and North Park, then headed to Normal Heights before turning back – was smooth, easy and uneventful, just as I’m sure Waymo would want me to say.
The only hiccup, if you could call it that, was the Waymo Driver’s – oddly, that’s what Waymo calls its driverless system – quick stop in the park when a man abruptly entered a crosswalk in front of us. Which would have happened to any human driver, and does regularly in the park.
Glass half full people: Yay, the Ojai did just what it was supposed to! Glass half empty: Oh, no, near miss, Waymo!
The Ojai didn’t jolt or jostle me, and in fact, when I fumbled with the seat belt, the car came to a stop until it sensed I was properly belted in. In addition, when I gabbed with my Waymo host, Sandy Karp, for a few minutes after our ride ended, a human voice chimed in over the car’s comms to check if everything was OK. Turns out Waymo’s system questions why anyone would linger and builds a checkup into the works to see if the rider is safe.
If you’re on the fence about driverless taxis, particularly as a woman, this, along with riding without a male driver, is a first-rate feature.
Yet our current onward rush into the future – AI, data centers, and yes, Waymo, part of Alphabet, Google’s parent company – leaves many people uncertain at best and anxiety-riddled at worst. Their view of the future may be more “Terminator: Rise of the Machines” doom than, say, “Star Trek” utopia.
Aside from those concerns, there’s the questions over local control, the fate of those who make their livings as taxi and ride-share drivers and just what happens if Waymo Driver does stall out or go haywire.
We’ll let Karp break down the tech behind a Waymo ride to try and ease those fears.
“The way Waymo Driver works is it uses a combination of sensors and AI to make real-time driving decisions. So the sensors provide the Waymo Driver (a) 360 view of the world around it up to 500 meters away with overlapping fields of view,” she said.
Those sensors, she explained, have “different superpowers,” some focused on weather and lighting conditions, others on street signs and colors. AI factors in when it comes to those real-time driving decisions.
And as you or I become better at something, so, the company contends, does Waymo, but at far greater scale than say, Gladwell’s 10,000 hours.
“What you and I learn from each other and from the handbook, Waymo Driver learns from over 200 million miles of fully autonomous experience,” Karp said.
Waymo also touts their safety performance, though experts, while hopeful, are more cautious. The president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety noted earlier this year that “on a limited scale, these driverless cars are safer than human drivers.” But he added that “the present data collection system isn’t good enough to allow continuous monitoring of a large-scale expansion.”
So San Diego will have to decide whether to jump on the Waymo bandwagon. If locals do, they will be far from alone. The company announced in March that weekly paid rides had doubled in less than a year, to 500,000.
And FOMO is a thing. Seeing all those Ojais around town surely has planted a seed. Waymo is tight-lipped about the formal launch of San Diego’s services – Karp would say only that invites would be sent to potential riders “likely by the end of the summer.” Download Waymo’s app and sign up for San Diego notifications and perhaps the chances are better to snag one.
As for being aghast and agog, as Karp approached the Ojai to depart Balboa Park after dropping me off – I hoofed it back to my humble non-robot vehicle and drove myself home – a man and a woman stood on the sidewalk outside Casa del Prado, one with camera in hand, each with their gaze trained upon the Waymo.
Maybe they just can’t wait for their chance at a ride? Soon, San Diego.
