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Tag: Waymo

  • Get in, Loser—We’re Chasing a Waymo Into the Future

    Get in, Loser—We’re Chasing a Waymo Into the Future

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    A third-generation San Franciscan, Gabe says he grew up playing with Nancy Pelosi’s kids and went to high school with Gavin Newsom, and now he’s a driver the way they’re politicians—it’s in his blood. He’s been operating taxicabs, Ubers, or Lyfts since 1995, and even helped organize a taxi workers’ strike in the late ’90s. He has also written about driving, ride-hailing, or motorcycling for the past two decades. And if you think we’re being silly about car-chase movie tropes, Gabe was a machine-gunner for the US Marines during the first Gulf War—so he is at least ex-military. He’s driving a gray Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV (9/10, WIRED recommends) and keeps his military service ribbons affixed to the dashboard. There’s also a 100-year-old ukulele poking out of the center console.

    The chase begins as planned: One of us hails a Waymo a few blocks away, rides it to the edge of the parking lot, then bolts to join the others in our pursuit vehicle. “You know what you have to say, right?” Gabe says from the driver’s seat as we scramble to buckle up. WIRED blinks.

    “Come on!” Gabe says. “Haven’t you ever seen old movies? You jump in the cab and you say, “Follow that car!”

    But the Waymo just sits there. For two agonizing minutes. Plenty of time for us to stare awkwardly at our quarry—a vehicle whose shape recalls a cartoon shark with a bunch of spinning doodads implanted in its skin—as it stares back at us through its 29 cameras and five lidars, mapping our contours.

    “It looks shy,” says Gabe.

    “It’s ashamed. It’s so ashamed,” WIRED says. “It knows it’s being tricked.”

    Then, at 10:42 am, the Waymo starts to move. WIRED shouts, “Follow that car!”

    Less than a minute later, Gabe sighs. “I’m not used to driving this slow.”

    Before we go any further, let’s get something out of the way: Riding around inside a self-driving vehicle, especially for the first time, is an immediately cool experience. It starts out like an amusement park ride—the empty gondola sidles up, you step in, you shut the door. Then it becomes the opposite of an amusement park ride. No thrills. No lurches. No clatter. Just you, some soft black leather, a default computer voice, and—for now—a steering wheel, ghostly turning this way and that.

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  • Waymo Is Picking Up at the Airport. That’s a Big Deal

    Waymo Is Picking Up at the Airport. That’s a Big Deal

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    On Tuesday, Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle developer Waymo said it would begin operating all-day, curbside pickups and drop-offs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona. The announcement came with little fanfare—a post on X. But it signals that after years of delay, self-driving vehicles might be (literally) moving in the right direction.

    The new curbside airport service sends a good signal about Waymo’s business, says Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst with Gartner. “The airport is the primary destination and departure point for any sort of mobility service, whether it’s a cab, shuttle bus—or an autonomous robocab,” he says. Almost a decade ago, then-upstarts Uber and Lyft fought hard to gain access to airports. Less price-sensitive business travelers, families lugging bags, and anyone who doesn’t want to spend to park at the airport all want easy-to-access rides, making it an ideal place to base a taxi service.

    Even before all-day curbside service began, the airport was Waymo’s most popular destination in Phoenix, says Brad Gillette, Waymo’s market lead in the city. Waymo has operated self-driving vehicles in Arizona since 2017, and began offering rides to Phoenix’s airport at the end of 2022. For the first year of service, passengers could only get picked up and dropped off from the stations along the airport’s “Sky Train”—areas with less intense traffic. Late last year, Waymo began to offer nighttime curbside service between 10 pm and 6 am, also periods in which the airport was less hectic. Now, the service is open anytime, to anyone who downloads the company’s Waymo One app.

    The company says it has served nearly 100,000 rides to and from the airport since it first started its station service nearly two years ago, and is now serving thousands of travelers per week.

    The airport departures and arrivals curbs are also a really difficult place to drive. Cars pulling in and out, hunting for passengers, operating in tight spaces—this sort of thing is hard enough for a human. Gillette says it took Waymo a year of testing to ensure the company’s technology “can predict and react appropriately, with a certain level of assertiveness, in order to pull into the right place at the right time.”

    Waymos will pick up and drop off from designated terminal rideshare and electric vehicle pickup areas, Eric Everts, a public information officer for the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, said in an email. Through Waymo’s app, passengers will be given specific dwell times to load into vehicles, and the cars will leave them behind if they don’t hit the deadline, Everts wrote—implying that traffic cops won’t have to hassle the driverless vehicles to move along.

    Bumpy Ride

    Last summer, curbside pickup and dropoff became a point of contention as Waymo and competitor Cruise both applied to begin full-time paid passenger robotaxi service in San Francisco—to, basically, officially take on Uber and Lyft in the city where those services were born. In letters to the regulator overseeing the permitting, the city of San Francisco said it was concerned that robotaxis weren’t pulling close enough to curbs to pick up and drop off passengers.

    For California regulators, who control autonomous vehicle operations in the state, the concern wasn’t much of a sticking point: A commission approved the permits in August 2023 . (Cruise has since had its permit to operate rides in the state revoked, after state officials alleged the company concealed details of an incident in which an autonomous vehicle dragged a pedestrian some 20 feet.) But for some city officials and residents, robotaxis’ behavior at the curb was enough to say, no thanks.

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  • Waymo Will Bring Autonomous Taxis to Los Angeles—Its Biggest Challenge Yet

    Waymo Will Bring Autonomous Taxis to Los Angeles—Its Biggest Challenge Yet

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    Paid autonomous vehicle service is coming to Los Angeles, thanks to a decision by California regulators today to allow Alphabet subsidiary Waymo to operate in the city. Under the new ruling, Waymo is also permitted to launch service in a large section of the San Francisco Peninsula.

    The decision by the California Public Utilities Commission will likely prove controversial. It comes over the protest of local governments and agencies, including the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, the city of South San Francisco, and the County of San Mateo. All argued that local government and citizens should have more input and oversight over the expanded autonomous taxi service.

    But California laws allow state regulators, not local ones, to make decisions about where and how self-driving vehicles can operate in the state—a fact that the CPUC cited in today’s decision.

    In a written statement, Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina said that the company will “take a careful and incremental approach to expansion by continuing to work closely with city officials, local communities, and our partners.”

    The decision presents Waymo with what could be its biggest challenge yet: service in the second-largest American city by population, closely observed by government officials who have been skeptical of its technology from the start. Last fall, LA mayor Karen Bass wrote to California regulators to argue that her city has the technical know-how and capacity to determine how and where self-driving cars should operate within its limits. She cited robotaxi companies’ initial troubles operating on streets in San Francisco and argued that city officials were best positioned to “maximize the benefits of new transportation technologies and mitigate harm across our diverse communities.”

    The California legislature is considering several bills that would give local lawmakers more oversight over autonomous-vehicle technology.

    Waymo currently operates a paid taxi service in the city of San Francisco and in metro Phoenix, Arizona. The company has operated a pilot service in sections of Los Angeles since the fall. Waymo has also announced its intention to launch service in Austin, Texas.

    The company’s initial LA service area encompasses a hearty chunk of the city, from the Pacific Palisades to the west, Hollywood to the north, East Los Angeles to the east, and Gardena and Compton to the south. In the San Francisco Bay Area, riders will now be able to catch robotaxi rides between San Francisco and Sunnyvale, bounded by Interstate 280 to the west.

    Autonomous vehicle developers have had a tough couple of months. After Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise received permission to start collecting passenger fares in San Francisco last summer, both companies were involved in high-profile crashes. In one incident, a Cruise vehicle collided with a fire truck after it failed to yield to the vehicle in an intersection. Two months later, Cruise had its permit to operate in California yanked after public officials alleged that the company hadn’t been forthcoming about the details of a collision that seriously injured a pedestrian. Cruise has since halted testing across the nation, laid off nearly a quarter of its employees, and replaced almost all of its leading executives. Another company, Motional, said it would lay off 5 percent of its staff this week after a major supporter said it would reduce its funding.

    But in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, at least, driverless technology’s future is looking up: Waymo may begin its fared driverless passenger service in the expanded area “effective today,” the CPUC wrote.

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