After a beta period of free rides for testers, Waymo now allows all users to get on their waiting list from their website. When you are selected, you will be able to ride on their self-driving “taxi” electric vehicles using their app. More recently, Waymo has expended their coverage of LA to the area shown below:
Basically, you can go from Santa Monica on the West to Downtown on the East, and Beverly Hills down to Marina Del Rey. However, Waymo will not travel on the freeway yet so going more than a few miles may take a while.
When I compared prices against Uber, the Waymo price was slightly higher by about 5-10% but the total comes out cheaper since you don’t have to tip on the Waymo.
While riding, you can view what the Waymo computer is “seeing” on a display between the front seats. As you can see, there is a button to “Pull over” if you just want to get the heck out of the car.
When I pressed the “Support” button, I got this screen. A live person came on the speaker and I could talk to him regarding my ride. I wanted to be dropped off at a particular location at the mall but the customer support guy told me that was not possible because of the rules imposed by the mall and for safety reasons. It might take years for the general public to get used to autonomous cars driving around the city.
This is a video I took when the Waymo encountered an accident on Olympic and decided on it’s own to make a U-turn instead of going around the accident. Very interesting choice.
After using the service about 10 times during one week, I found it to be generally very safe and caused no problems. The only complaint I have is they will not pick you up or drop you off in a “dangerous” spot so you might have to walk a little further than using Uber.
It might take a while, but eventually, this will be the future and at some point, there will be no human drivers.
