And the prices seems to roughly match Uber/Lyft. Sometimes they're higher sometimes lower. The one ride I took I chose the more expensive Waymo just for the better experience. You don't have to worry about what the driver might say or do that makes you uncomfortable or unsafe.
Even if they're sometimes slower in pickup or trip time, on average, I greatly value the consistency of the experience over everything else.
They aren't aggressive like a normal driver when traffic is stopped and there's a clear but small gap that would result in the car being at an angle crossing traffic.
The lidar can't see any gap between cars when trying to turn into a more distant lane, so any obstruction to a close lane due to traffic kills them.
Source: been stuck in and observed Waymo in this situation for 10+ minutes several times.
A human driver is willing to make the turn much sooner.
Don't take a Waymo if you're in a hurry and the route will have such a left turns.
The light had just turned yellow before we entered the intersection, and I was sure it would slam the brakes (there was no one behind, so no risk of being read-ended). Yet it accelerated and cleared the intersection as the light turned red. It was what any reasonably good driver would do, but certainly edgy for a 100% law-abiding robot.
Pretty flawless experience.
That particular one was a traffic light green light with a "do not queue over intersection" area specifically designed to allow cars in my lane to turn onto the main road. The Waymo can't see that there's a gap in the lane it wanted to turn into, and was too conservative about queuing over the intersection at an angle when the light was green like any human would do.
I take both waymo's and lyft/uber all the time in sf and waymo's are way slower. I'd estimate it at 10-15% slower. Once the novelty of a waymo wears off you realize that they drive like a high anxiety teenager and going 15 mph on a 15 mph road, coming to gentle full stop at every stop sign, and being very tentative on turns and passing people all add up to a very slow ride.
You're right though it definitely feels safer.
Kidding but not kidding. Easily half my Uber rides have been legit scary. Yellow cabs only slightly better.
How does Waymo do for cleanliness and odor? That would be another selling point vs regular Uber/Lyft and many yellow cabs. These days they all seem to douse the interior with cheap cologne.
Uber drivers cause accidents sometimes, just like all drivers do. Whenever this happens, we generally blame the driver and not Uber. It's a completely unremarkable event that the media will not pick up on, because everybody knows that car accidents are just a fact of life.
If a Waymo causes just one fatal accident, people will be up in arms and demand a ban on self driving. That means they have to be extremely conservative in how they drive, especially as more and more of them appear and the probability of one causing an accident goes up due to simple statistics.
Human drivers are all different. They also learn from their mistakes and change unpredictably over time. Humans can get away with all kinds of unsafe behavior, because bad outcomes are unlikely in any particular situation. If something bad happens, it could easily be a one-off issue. And even with systemic issues, it's easier to change the environment / regulations / vehicles than the drivers.
They are doing the right thing.
"Lawful to a fault teenager" is not what people want in a taxi driver. That type of chauffeur doesn't make people feel safe. It makes them on edge. But unfortunately that's the kind of AI chauffeur regulators want.
I agree it's the "right" way to do it from a PR perspective though.
A Waymo drives more like a 50 year old who's seen some shit and drives well but defensively.
Also, don’t you think it’s weird that you complain that the car goes 15 on a road with speed limit equal to 15?
The cost of a Waymo car right now is around $150K. Soon, Waymo will build its own cars (with partnership with some car manufacturer) from scratch which will bring this cost to around $40K.
currently WayMo has around 2 people per car employed in service roles which will be like 2 people per 50 cars. At that point they will be swimming in profits.
Do you have a source for this? I'm curious about their operations
The problem with this is that one of their competitors (Tesla) now has very powerful friends in the government which are certainly not above using that power in their favor...
They'll perpetually be in "beta" until they're so ubiquitous that the idea of getting rid of them is unthinkable.
What they may do is refuse to raise prices and eventually inflation will make them the cheapest.
Take this with the grain of salt it deserves. No one relying solely on publicly available information can give you anything more than highly speculative guesses.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/28/waymo-is-reportedly-buildi...
thats just a function of the numbers of cars on the road