SAN FRANCISCO — Seeing a fully autonomous car roam around can feel a little surreal, but riding in one is becoming a reality in some major U.S. cities.
For many Americans, the kerfuffle over robotaxi services can feel foreign, since many of them still aren’t widely accessible across the country. But the companies behind these services are slowly working to take self-driving car rides into the mainstream, and locals and tourists are quickly learning to embrace them in cities such asSan Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix — where the robotaxi service Waymo says it now serves more than 50,000 paid rides per week.
In those cities, downloading Waymo’s app and tapping a few buttons can get you into an autonomous Jaguar in minutes. The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, also plans to launch the service in Austin sometime this year.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Zoox is gearing up to deploy purpose-built self-driving cars in Las Vegas in the coming months. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) And Tesla is expected to offer a first taste of its robotaxi plans in Los Angeles on Oct. 10, a development CEO Elon Musk bills as its biggest moment in the company’s history since the launch of its Model 3.
In other words, you’ll sooner or later face the option of getting ferried across town in a self-driving car. Washington Post reporters crisscrossed San Francisco — where robotaxis are widely available and are now part of everyday life here — to see how Waymos stack up against more traditional, human-centered ride-hailing services.
We compared prices, shared notes on ride quality and experience, and measured how long it took for drivers — human or otherwise — to get us where we needed to go. Here’s how that experience stacked up.
Cost
Riding in a futuristic robocar sounds like it should cost a ton — but it doesn’t. On the whole, Waymo rides were competitive with the base fares offered by Uber and Lyft.
In fact, in our ride testing, we often found that Waymos were the ones we ultimately paid the least for. That’s not very surprising, though: Waymo has no tipping mechanism since, after all, who exactly would you be thanking financially?
If you’re a longtime Lyft or Uber rider, though, you may occasionally find promotions or credits applied that drive down the final cost of your ride. That’s especially true if you’re a subscriber to services such as Lyft Pink and Uber One, which — in addition to ride discounts — offer discounts on food deliveries.
As always, though, ride price fluctuates based on traffic and time of day, so no ride-hailing service has emerged as the definitively cheapest option. If ride cost ranks highly on your list of concerns, remember to shop around for the best fare.
Safety
Sketchy rides are — unfortunately — still common.
Waymo’s lack of a driver erases some ride-hailing anxiety, such as potentially getting a creepy driver or a stranger knowing your home address (or the classic paranoia of thinking you’re getting kidnapped when your driver accidentally takes a wrong turn.)
While Uber and Lyft drivers can be a gamble, ranging from overly cautious to reckless, you can count on Waymo to always follow the rules of the road by the book. In our tests, the Waymo patiently wove through San Francisco’s narrow and busy streets, giving pedestrians and bicyclists the right of way and utilizing its software and sensors to detect obstacles ahead of time.
However, when met with unforeseen obstacles during our rides, the artificial intelligence sometimes lagged before figuring out its next move, making passengers nervous and other drivers angry.
All of our Waymo test rides got us to our destinations safely, but it’s worth remembering that robotaxis can’t always avoid accidents completely. One Waymo car struck a cyclist in San Franciscolast February; a few months later, another one crashed into a telephone pole in Phoenix. And let’s not forget that another high-profile robotaxi service — Cruise — was grounded after a grisly San Francisco accident of its own.
Even though you don’t have to worry about surly drivers in a Waymo, these vehicles can draw some extra — and at times, unwanted — attention.
During a test ride through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, a handful of cyclists decided to tease the car by weaving in and out of the lane in front of it, laughing the whole way. On another occasion, a Waymo pulling over to pick us up late at night drew a small crowd of onlookers streaming out of a nearby performance venue — which made getting into the car a bit awkward.
We never felt unsafe in these situations, but they definitely made the ride (or part of it) surprisingly tense.
Speed
For chill, leisurely rides, Waymo is a great way to get around. But if you’re in a hurry, human drivers are your best bet.
In our tests, rides with the robotaxi service almost always took the longest — a possibility Waymo nods at on this support page, which mentions that pickups and travel ETA may be affected by the “extra time and care” these cars take. Unlike drivers who may bend the rules of the road if you’re in a hurry, Waymo’s programming doesn’t allow any cut corners, following every sign and posted speed limit — which might add extra time to your ride.
Human drivers, meanwhile, can be responsive to your needs in ways machines can’t. There’s no way to tell a Waymo, for example, that you really need to get your destination by a specific time.
Humans also bring creativity and experience to bear on these situations — when one of our Lyft drivers noticed that the route Lyft’s app offered was slightly inefficient, he turned around and asked if he could take a faster, more direct path. You bet, we said.
Experience
Waymo’s self-driving model is an introvert’s dream: free of awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes even invasive small talk with a driver.
The experience of riding a Waymo was very consistent, in our tests. With no one behind the wheel of the company’s self-driving Jaguars, you’re free to focus on your phone or the people around you. And thanks to user-accessible touch screens, you’re able to directly control cabin temperature and music. You will never have to remind someone to pop the trunk if needed, either — if you open it to load something at the beginning of the ride, it’ll automatically open once the ride ends.
While the lack of a human driver can be a boon to some people, it also means that other facets of the ride experience might not get as much attention. One of our Waymo rides, for instance, had dirty windows, dust and debris on the floor, and a smear or bird poop on the window. Waymo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but it notes on a support page that especially messy customers may be charged cleaning fees.
Privacy
Waymo cars are loaded with sensors and cameras to get a 360-degree view of the world around it. But there are cameras inside these cars, too, and they’re always recording video — which doesn’t always feel great.
The company says they use these cameras to, among other things, check for lost items and to make sure people inside are following the service’s rules. (Expect a call from Waymo’s support staff, for example, if you try to squeeze more than four people into a car.)
There are microphones inside these cars too, though they remain off unless you contact support staff from inside one. (In other words, belting your favorite show tunes is on the table.)
If you prefer that your image doesn’t wind up in some data center somewhere, you may want to rule Waymo out. That said, Ubers and Lyfts don’t require cameras recording inside their cars, but some drivers can choose to use them anyway. At the very least, though, there’s a human in the car you can talk to about their cameras if they bother you.