All the Waymo cars are the same: Jaguar all-electric I-PACE SUVs.
As part of dealing with my recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (see last month’s column for details), my wife and I drove into San Francisco to meet with my surgeon, Dr. Carlos Corvera. He’s the chief of the Hepatobiliary & Pancreatic Surgery Program at UCSF, and I feel fortunate to have him performing a pancreaticoduodenectomy on me.
Anyway, down to The City we went. Following our appointment, my long-suffering spouse agreed to take a ride in a Waymo self-driving taxi to get some ice cream (at the original Swensen’s, whose ice cream struck me as only so-so) as well as some grist for Tech Talk. Let me preface the remainder of my column by saying that this was my first experience in any sort of autonomous vehicle.
And it was almost completely anticlimactic.
Like everything else in our modern world, Waymo has an app that allows you to call a car to your location. I had downloaded it prior to driving down to SF, so I opened it up on my phone when we exited the UCSF building at 1825 4th St. If you’ve ever called an Uber or a Lyft, the experience is much the same. Once you establish where you want to go—Waymo is only available in San Francisco, hence my taking advantage of being there—you pay for your ride in the app and wait for the car to arrive. The app tells you where to wait for the car—in our case it was a walk of about a block to a spot where the car could pull over safely—presumably, Waymo has a detailed database of such locations.
The app also warns you that the car will only wait for you for two minutes, so when it arrived, we were focused on getting into the car promptly. By default, the car won’t unlock its doors until you tap a button in the app. On our second ride, the app offered the option of unlocking the doors via Bluetooth when we approached the car and making that a permanent setting. A convenience that reminds me of the “smart” stateroom door aboard our cruise ship (which I wrote about in April of last year).
Because it was our first ride, we didn’t know that you actually have to tap a screen to start the ride. So, we got into the back seat of the car as quickly as we could. There’s a brief “safety briefing” that takes about a minute, and mostly reminds passengers that they have to buckle up, and not to touch the steering wheel. After all that, we tapped the screen to start the ride and let the adrenaline rush subside. Which it did, after a couple of blocks.
And that was the point at which I really noticed that no one was in the driver’s seat. It was so much like catching an Uber, a Lyft or a taxi, that the fact the driver’s seat was pulled all the way forward and the seat belt was buckled in place didn’t even register.
All the Waymo cars are the same: Jaguar all-electric I-PACE SUVs, which cost upwards of $70,000—even before all the magic Waymo hardware is added. As you’d expect with that price tag, they’re well-appointed on the inside and quite spacious. A Waymo can fit four people—one in the front passenger seat and three in the back—which, despite the interior room, I suspect would be more than a little cozy.
We arrived at Swensen’s. Just prior to arrival, the car reminded us to collect our belongings, as well as that we would only have a minute to get out before it would drive off. I suspect this is a placebo like the “close door” button in elevators, but we didn’t test it. It is also good to note that the car has interior cameras and microphones and may monitor you visually. Waymo says the mics are only live when you are talking to customer service, one of the options on the car’s fore and aft touch screens.
On the return trip, we were a bit calmer, and I sat in the front passenger seat to watch the car drive itself. Both touch screens display what the car “sees” around it: parked vehicles, moving vehicles, bicyclists, pedestrians, even dogs (I saw it with my own eyes). Sitting in the front seat, the experience was exactly like having a human driver at the wheel, down to the small adjustments one makes to avoid a traffic cone or a pedestrian too close to the roadway.
Each trip took about 25 minutes to cover 2.8 miles, and cost about $21. As far as I could tell, the vehicle never exceeded 25 mph, the speed limit in most of SF. I think the software’s deep respect for posted speed limits is one reason that impatient individuals who are used to driving themselves will never buy self-driving cars.
