Confessions of a (former) robotaxi haterConfessions of a (former) robotaxi hater

The first time you see a car glide through a San Francisco intersection with no one behind the wheel, you hold your breath.

Wait there long enough, however, and the sight becomes mundane. It’s not uncommon to see half a dozen Alphabet Waymos, Amazon Zooxes, and Tesla Robotaxis at the same light. Sherwood News’ Rani Molla had reservations about riding in one, like the majority of Americans, but as our senior technology correspondent, it was time to give them a fair try — despite feeling that “driverless cars, like the AI that powers them, are cringe.”

• Molla spent a couple of weeks traversing the San Francisco Bay Area with family, friends, and sources in driverless cars. 
• Everyone she spoke to who had actually used them — a former BART driver who takes Waymos, the Tesla Robotaxi safety monitors whose jobs may soon end, residents who are finding new ways around their old city — said some version of the same thing: this is the future.
• “That’s why it pains me to say that over dozens of rides,” Molla wrote, “through rain and shine, at night and during the day, on crowded city streets and highways — my experience with robotaxis was consistently good.” So good in fact, she came to prefer them for a variety of reasons.
• That said, there were hiccups, and pros and cons for each of the three services Molla tried. Waymo came out on top as the “Platonic ideal of a robotaxi service: no driver, just an easy-to-use app and a near flawless ride.” Dive deeper into her reviews of Waymo, Zoox, and Robotaxi here.

Things seem different now than when Uberfirst trialed autonomous rides in 2018. As one resident told Molla, “ I 100% think it’s safer. I feel safer as a rider in an autonomous vehicle, as a driver around other AVs, because they’re driving the speed limit, they stop for people crossing the street. I feel safer as a biker, as a walker… I feel safer on all accounts.” 

The Takeaway

Autonomous vehicles are starting to expand far beyond ride-sharing, as they mold not only the future of human transport but also how goods move around the planet. Silicon Valley historian Margaret O’Mara said she thinks we could be heading for a tipping point.

It isn’t that the technology has become flawless; the awkward drop-offs and “edge cases” prove it’s still very much a work in progress. But as Molla found in just a few weeks, it’s easy to start treating these cars like any other piece of infrastructure. 

The driverless car is coming**** — not because it has mastered the world, but because we are learning how to live with it.