- Quality of Lyft and Uber rides have gone down significantly.
- Consistently spacious, clean and quiet cars. You know what you'll get.
- AC always works and not up to the whim of the driver.
- No chatty driver to disturb our sleeping baby.
Negatives:
- Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.
- Pick up and drop off tend to be a small walk from requested locations.
Forgot one more positive - you can choose a soothing music play list in the car and it automatically resumes in the next ride. Small but really nice detail when traveling with a baby.
> You can choose a soothing music play list in the car and it automatically resumes in the next ride
Oh wow! There is a non zero chance that was implemented because of some feedback I provided as a trusted tester many months ago. I napped my son in them a lot when they were free and just spent my time thinking up things they should do and reporting them in app.
> Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.
Waymo says they are a premium service like Uber Black because they have nice cars (Jaguar I-Pace), plus the novelty and safety of being driverless. They’re not trying to be competitive with Uber X or shared rides for in their current form.
A rarely discussed negative to Waymo is that they drive slower than human drivers. Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic, and it's not uncommon to see human drivers do unsafe moves to pass a Waymo.
> Anecdotally they can be 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic
I don't know anything about USA, but my understanding of other humans tells me that "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location, without surpassing it".
10% slower on a 30-minute journey is 3 minutes. if i'm in the back of a taxi, i'm on my phone or reading a book or something. getting there 10% slower really just doesn't matter.
humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.
Is that a negative of Waymo or a negative of the aggressive/illegal way many humans drive? My assumption is the anecdotal speed difference you notice is Waymos actually following the speed limit, and I imagine Waymo isn't really looking to program their cars to break the law while they're trying to expand their ability to operate.
If they're really safer than human drivers, like the Google-funded studies claim they are, then this seems like a positive rather than a negative. Perhaps we humans should be slowing down and driving more carefully?
But I'm not sure if we can trust these studies. I'd really like to see a completely independent evaluation, of how the safety of Waymo cars compares to human drivers, and to the safety other companies like Zoox.
Human ride shares drive so wildly they make me sick like half the time. Never happened in a waymo. Yeah it's a bit slower, but everyone always overestimates the gains from driving so fast. We all have to stop at the same red lights, or get in the same lines for the stop sign, even if you get to the line way faster. I'm happy to get there 30s later for a smooth ride.
Honestly as a cyclist who takes Waymo, all the Waymos I've seen are much nicer to cyclists than any human driver. Most human drivers in SF either buzz past the 3 ft legal limit going 15 mph over (good luck when their mirror taps you at 40 mph) to try and overtake the cyclist or they'll just edge the cyclist out any time there's space to merge into the lane. Waymos usually give cyclists the whole lane comfortably and take time to merge out properly.
(I've read comments that if you're on a skateboard this isn't true but I've never used a skateboard in SF so I don't know much about the experience.)
Sometimes I wish I could load my bike into a Waymo. I hit a flat yesterday and left my replacement tube at home and it would have been so much nicer if I could have loaded my bike into the car and gotten a ride home.
Marked NOTABUG. One reason to like AVs is that they follow the rules, and a critical mass of AVs, even as a minority of vehicles, will impose a "phase change" on traffic.
Waymo has a partnership with Avis Budget Group to use their fleet cleaning and refueling facilities. I imagine if a user reports a dirty car someone can pop in on a camera, check it out, and divert the car to a depot.
They have some rider rules around keeping the car clean (screenshot link below). I'm not sure if they are enforced to this level but they do have at least one camera in the car (above the middle rear seat).
I suspect they visually inspect the cars after each ride and send them to the depot if there's something that needs to be cleaned up. There are several cameras inside the car giving a good view of the interior.
Because they have courtesy to not block traffic. Anecdotally, drivers are also MUCH more aggressive near them, so I’d be pretty nervous as a pedestrian getting in/out of one near heavy traffic. I’m not handicap in any way, and I’m totally fine walking to the corner of a city block to get in it, in exchange for a much safer ride than an Uber.
I’ve never had it be more than a few hundred feet - usually it’s 2-3 cars away where it can parallel park on the other side of an intersection in the WORST case. Oh I guess they do avoid some of the intense AF hills but I’ve had Uber drivers do the same.
In my experience they are very strict about finding a “safe” place to pick up and drop off, which often means turning onto a small side street or looking for a gap in parked cars. They won’t block traffic like a Lyft/Uber driver might.
The app forces you to pick locations that the car can park safely (no double parking) that's closest to the requested locations. They can be 1-2 minutes walk.
Not a big deal for us to be honest, except when going to the theaters in SF, where the car can stop a block away in sketchy Tenderloin.
Human drivers are willing to break the law for pick ups and drop offs, and as a society we largely tolerate that as long as it's not egregious in terms of safety or blocking others.
But programming a robot to deliberately break the law is uncomfortable for people to think about.
I’d love to take it to the airport, but I imagine it’ll be a mess trying to pull up and park at departures. It’s already incredibly chaotic with the way humans are, and I don’t expect they’ll even pretend to extend any curtesy to a robot.
Maybe I’m wrong though? I think they go to the airport in phoenix, I just haven’t heard any reports on the experience.
Uber/Lyft drivers only get tips on 15-30% of rides, so tips are like ~3% of revenue. If you choose to tip, then prices are going to be very similar between Waymo and Uber/Lyft.
From my experience prices for Waymo are at least double that of an equivalent Lyft/Uber ride and wait times are usually 20+ minutes. It is a great novelty but nowhere near where it needs to be to handle real scale.
Doesn’t match my experience in SF. I see 10% premium over Uber/Lyft, with Lyft and Waymo displaying wait times that are ~3 slower, but actual wait times are the same. (Uber consistently underestimates in my experience.)
> - Consistently spacious, clean and quiet cars. You know what you'll get.
- AC always works and not up to the whim of the driver.
How much of the cars being clean, quiet, and having HVAC working is just because it's new?
A few years down the line the cars will be old (until they're replaced) and won't be as clean or quiet or have reliable AC. It will probably become like aircraft where they prioritize maintenance of safety-critical features but not so much the seat comfort.
There are lots of upsides to not having a driver in the car, but I wouldn't count on the cars always being nice.
Extremely smooth! I can't comment on the c-spine issues but I'd argue that it's the smoothest driver I've ever experienced. Surely they have some math in their AI driving code that clamps acceleration and jerkiness. It's NOTHING like Tesla Full Self Driving, which I find to be incredibly jerky for both steering and acceleration.
We take an infant car seat and use the European belt routing (or if that fails due to short belts in American cars, American belt routing) to secure to the back seat.
Wait how do they justify having an even more expensive ride with fewer people to pay? The whole point of cutting the driver out is to save on cost, without that the entire project is no better than uber or lyft (which already overcharges by an arm and a leg)
If they priced below human labour they might have their testing licenses revoked due to political pressure. Right now they're still in the testing phase, there's no need to rock the boat by pricing below uber and lyft yet.
You raise the price to reduce the demand to what you can comfortably supply. Price is not a tool of justice. It's a tool for incentivising or disincentivising the customer.
Initially, automation is always more expensive than cheap labor. That’s why we don’t automate things until human labor becomes more expensive than the ease of automation.
You are using a product before enshittification begins, of course it's much nicer.
When it's been 28 quarters of general availability of Wayno and profits need to keep growing faster than before, they'll get dirty, the AC will stop being fixed, they'll start getting flats / engine trouble, etc. in the middle of the drive.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Be sure you move quickly to the next new thing before this one goes downhill too :/
The point is that it's more profitable for who runs the taxi company.
Eventually price will always be what people are willing to pay.
I bet what that in a decade the price will be identical to (disappearing) human drivers and then gouged higher.
It's depressing how focused we are on the wrong things for cities and planet, self driving taxis rather than quality public transport. We are destined to extinction and we deserve it.
Sorry, but any argument that basically boils down to "it's better because I don't have to talk to a driver" is not a real argument. Drivers are people too. Nevermind the fact that you are cheering for people to lose their jobs.
Would you accept any historical development that reduced demand for some kind of labor (or human interaction) as potentially positive? There are a lot of those.
(I'm happy to hear if the answer is "yes".)
For example, most kinds of shops were (like jewelry stores today) apparently historically not self-service, so you had to ask the shopkeeper for every item individually, and the shopkeeper would have to retrieve it for you.
Maybe a more direct analogy is that you once had to ask human operators to complete telephone calls for you, and gradually this was replaced with automated switches and direct-dial systems. That has benefits and drawbacks, but I think I appreciate it quite a bit. Do you think it would be better if that change hadn't happened?
San Fransisco slave-owning class misanthropy on display.
I'm sorry that the poor tried to talk to you instead of shutting up, and performing his digi-task without disturbing your innocent baby.
Is it any wonder that the same upper-middle class NPC's that treat human beings like machines also (in error) dream of a future where machines will replace human beings?
Yikes, you can't attack another user like that here. We have to ban accounts that do, so please don't do it again.
While I have you: could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait generally? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Waymos are fantastic, I actually look forward to riding them every time. It's a quiet, peaceful space where you can relax for a bit on the way to your destination. Haven't had any issues with them except for one time where the car was super hot on the inside for whatever reason and the AC was not working.
Some curiosities from seeing them on the road a lot. You can tell it's them even when you can't see the extra protuberances:
- They take extended stops at stop signs, around 3-4 seconds.
- They have extra-bright headlights and brake lights.
- When waiting for a ride, they pull up next to parks and parking lots to avoid bothering residents. Their brake lights are on the whole time. If demand is low, they'll hang out in batches of 2-4. If a block has a hazy red hue at night, you know you've found a Waymo nest.
If they use waze logic for routing they are screwed with their baked in hesitation. Enjoy waiting until 8pm to get a sufficient gap for the far too polite waymo to make that unprotected left across six lanes waze is asking you to do.
As a cyclist, I trust the Waymos significantly more than human drivers to not hit me (I've been biking in SF since Jan and already had 3 unsafe incidents). The more, the better, I say.
I love Waymos compared to my ride sharing experience.
The base car is appealing (currently Jaguars). They're spacious for a >6 ft individual like myself. The user interface is intuitive and fun. There's a cool factor that exists.
Against ride sharing, given the lack of a driver, there's no variability in driver with regards to ambiance, scents, cleanliness, chattiness, and smoothness of the ride.
In my experience Waymo has been much worse compared to Lyft/Uber for longer rides.
A big problem with Waymo in its current state is how its routes are terribly inefficient.
It purposely avoids freeways and higher speed roads, opting to take more inefficient routes without regards to the number of stop signs, hills, and other factors which will inevitably lead to a longer travel time. It's almost like it's using a worse version of the "Avoid highways" feature on Google Maps, and getting to a further destination can take almost twice the amount of time as compared to a Lyft/Uber.
Another problem is its lack of human intuition and strategies when driving in the city during some kind of event where many of the roads are blocked off. A human driver would have been navigating the blocked roads throughout the day and already know where to go to avoid the crowds, where as Waymo naively follows its navigation system and gets stuck in a bunch of traffic for no reason.
It also drives annoyingly slowly which leads to frustration from human drivers who constantly try to overtake you.
I get around by bike, foot, transit, and car in that order and have mostly lost my ability to not get motion sick in a car when I'm not driving. I prefer taking Waymos any time I'm not in a hurry in SF, but usually traffic is bad enough during the hours I take it that it's not a huge factor anyway and if you can get a MUNI that's close to your start and end points, it's significantly faster. Rideshare and taxi drivers in most of SF are constantly changing lanes, cutting off pedestrians, or speeding from light to light to try and make up the extra 10-15% time lost that Waymo eats and can make for an unpleasant experience for me, but yes if I'm in a hurry I do prefer a human driver.
(There's a slight component where as primarily a cyclist I feel that Waymos are much nicer to cyclists than human drivers are and it gives me affinity to Waymos that I don't feel for human drivers in the city.)
I find Waymo the most useful to take after a concert far from a MUNI stop because usually surge pricing makes Lyft and Uber really expensive and I'm usually tired enough to not want to walk to a stop or it's late enough that MUNI headways are far apart.
> ability to not get motion sick in a car when I'm not driving.
As someone who lives in a city without Waymo, I'm curious -- are you allowed to ride in the front seat?
I can generally tolerate riding in the front passenger seat, as long as the driver is competent, but I suffer a bit riding in the rear. And don't get me started on what it's like riding in a limo...
I could definitely see that. If you're not pressed on time it can be a smoother ride for sure. But if you're trying to get somewhere fast or efficiently like going to the airport, you'd want to get a regular Lyft/Uber otherwise you might miss your flight.
It would be cool if you can configure the ride preferences for how aggressive you'd like it to drive.
I tried it in Phoenix in May and it wouldn’t take the freeway. And it’s definitely not generally available in the Bay area. (I take them every week or two.)
This seems like a pretty low price to pay for the huge upsides of safer rides and potentially lower car ownership, on top of the more comfortable experience discussed elsewhere here.
I believe it is fairly accurate at estimating the ride time. The first time I took it though, I mistakenly thought it would take the same amount of time to get to my destination as Google Maps estimated since that is usually the case for Uber/Lyft.
So I was pretty annoyed after I got into the car and then realized that the route it selected was going through a bunch of hills and side streets that would take twice as long as the most direct route (via Google Maps) and there's nothing I could do to change that once the ride started.
ime it consistently overestimates ride time by 50+% or so. usually like 10-20% slower than google maps, but the estimate is often 2x what google maps says.
Wooooooo! Goodbye Lyft and Uber. Honestly, I get a bag driver, use the AI for a while. Feels too sterile, switch back, get some interesting drivers. Waymo has everything going for it but good company. Love it.
Unfortunately Waymo still wont operate on freeways or at SFO. But I long for the day when I can take a Waymo between SF and Berkley or to SFO, those are my most frequent reasons to call a Lyft.
Anytime I go to east bay I go for BART. I’m not trying to sit in bay bridge traffic. BART gets a bad rap, like every other public transit in the US, but I’ve been using it pretty frequently recently (stopped around beginning of lockdowns) and it’s a great experience.
Once it goes really mainstream, I can see angry Uber/Lyft drivers and/or their supporters destroy Waymos in large quantities (isolated incidents already have happened multiple times in SF [0][1]), driving economical feasibility to zero and causing Waymo to cease operations in some cities.
I don't think uber/lyft drivers will be the culprit here. Generally, it's a pretty lousy job these days. There's also other options like survey or click work which pays more or less about the same net income.
If I were to place my bets on the biggest risk it'll be YouTubers finding out how to fuck around with the cars in unexpected ways and potentially tricking them.
Here's a dumb example. If you use one of those phone apps that flashes your screen like a police siren, could you trick the car to pull over? Would it unlock the doors and allow you to just hop in? What if you put a dog shaped balloon in the road on front of it? Could you set up some confusing cones and get it to drive into a wall? Could you confuse it at a stoplight with a green flashlight and have it start driving?
Readit News
- Quality of Lyft and Uber rides have gone down significantly.
- Consistently spacious, clean and quiet cars. You know what you'll get.
- AC always works and not up to the whim of the driver.
- No chatty driver to disturb our sleeping baby.
Negatives:
- Rides have usually 10% mark up over Lyft and Uber.
- Pick up and drop off tend to be a small walk from requested locations.
Forgot one more positive - you can choose a soothing music play list in the car and it automatically resumes in the next ride. Small but really nice detail when traveling with a baby.
Oh wow! There is a non zero chance that was implemented because of some feedback I provided as a trusted tester many months ago. I napped my son in them a lot when they were free and just spent my time thinking up things they should do and reporting them in app.
Strapping her down in a car seat and taking her for a drive usually rectified the situation.
I look forward to a future where this process can become more automated.
(/s, sorta)
Dead Comment
Waymo says they are a premium service like Uber Black because they have nice cars (Jaguar I-Pace), plus the novelty and safety of being driverless. They’re not trying to be competitive with Uber X or shared rides for in their current form.
I don't know anything about USA, but my understanding of other humans tells me that "Waymo is 10-25% slower than the rest of traffic" actually means "Waymo drives at the legal speed limit for that location, without surpassing it".
humans drive fast becuase when they're late it makes them feel like they're doing something to solve their problem, but the time savings are almost always inconsequential.
But I'm not sure if we can trust these studies. I'd really like to see a completely independent evaluation, of how the safety of Waymo cars compares to human drivers, and to the safety other companies like Zoox.
If we want nice, relaxing ride with no time pressure then we call a Waymo. Uber is still our go to if we are in a rush.
(I've read comments that if you're on a skateboard this isn't true but I've never used a skateboard in SF so I don't know much about the experience.)
Sometimes I wish I could load my bike into a Waymo. I hit a flat yesterday and left my replacement tube at home and it would have been so much nicer if I could have loaded my bike into the car and gotten a ride home.
I don't expect this to hold true once Waymo become generally available, alas.
https://i.imgur.com/vCRvWOc.jpeg
I’ve never had it be more than a few hundred feet - usually it’s 2-3 cars away where it can parallel park on the other side of an intersection in the WORST case. Oh I guess they do avoid some of the intense AF hills but I’ve had Uber drivers do the same.
Not a big deal for us to be honest, except when going to the theaters in SF, where the car can stop a block away in sketchy Tenderloin.
But programming a robot to deliberately break the law is uncomfortable for people to think about.
The Waymos probably don't have that kind of social skills.
Waymo just doesn’t want the backlash of them replacing human jobs right now.
Slightly expensive than humans for a premium consistent service is a good play.
Kudos to consistent execution for Waymo.
Wish we could say the same for Tesla.
Maybe I’m wrong though? I think they go to the airport in phoenix, I just haven’t heard any reports on the experience.
This is a phenomenally solvable problem. And it’ll scale without requiring more humans to train and monitor.
the comparisons are worse if i am coming from the outer richmond
How much of the cars being clean, quiet, and having HVAC working is just because it's new?
A few years down the line the cars will be old (until they're replaced) and won't be as clean or quiet or have reliable AC. It will probably become like aircraft where they prioritize maintenance of safety-critical features but not so much the seat comfort.
There are lots of upsides to not having a driver in the car, but I wouldn't count on the cars always being nice.
Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
Why are they more expensive? I hoped they would be cheaper without a driver to compensate.
Likely because they're not pricing based on their costs, but rather what the market will bear.
Although they have a lot of R&D to recoup, so that's a cost.
Obviously not, because consumers appear willing to pay a premium to not have a driver.
When it's been 28 quarters of general availability of Wayno and profits need to keep growing faster than before, they'll get dirty, the AC will stop being fixed, they'll start getting flats / engine trouble, etc. in the middle of the drive.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Be sure you move quickly to the next new thing before this one goes downhill too :/
I found that to be true as well, but when you factor in the tip to the driver they come out to more or less the same price.
Isn't the whole point of Waymo is that it'll be cheaper than a human driver?
Eventually price will always be what people are willing to pay.
I bet what that in a decade the price will be identical to (disappearing) human drivers and then gouged higher.
It's depressing how focused we are on the wrong things for cities and planet, self driving taxis rather than quality public transport. We are destined to extinction and we deserve it.
(I'm happy to hear if the answer is "yes".)
For example, most kinds of shops were (like jewelry stores today) apparently historically not self-service, so you had to ask the shopkeeper for every item individually, and the shopkeeper would have to retrieve it for you.
Maybe a more direct analogy is that you once had to ask human operators to complete telephone calls for you, and gradually this was replaced with automated switches and direct-dial systems. That has benefits and drawbacks, but I think I appreciate it quite a bit. Do you think it would be better if that change hadn't happened?
San Fransisco slave-owning class misanthropy on display.
I'm sorry that the poor tried to talk to you instead of shutting up, and performing his digi-task without disturbing your innocent baby.
Is it any wonder that the same upper-middle class NPC's that treat human beings like machines also (in error) dream of a future where machines will replace human beings?
While I have you: could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait generally? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- They take extended stops at stop signs, around 3-4 seconds.
- They have extra-bright headlights and brake lights.
- When waiting for a ride, they pull up next to parks and parking lots to avoid bothering residents. Their brake lights are on the whole time. If demand is low, they'll hang out in batches of 2-4. If a block has a hazy red hue at night, you know you've found a Waymo nest.
I love this
The base car is appealing (currently Jaguars). They're spacious for a >6 ft individual like myself. The user interface is intuitive and fun. There's a cool factor that exists.
Against ride sharing, given the lack of a driver, there's no variability in driver with regards to ambiance, scents, cleanliness, chattiness, and smoothness of the ride.
I am very much looking forward to this expansion.
A big problem with Waymo in its current state is how its routes are terribly inefficient.
It purposely avoids freeways and higher speed roads, opting to take more inefficient routes without regards to the number of stop signs, hills, and other factors which will inevitably lead to a longer travel time. It's almost like it's using a worse version of the "Avoid highways" feature on Google Maps, and getting to a further destination can take almost twice the amount of time as compared to a Lyft/Uber.
Another problem is its lack of human intuition and strategies when driving in the city during some kind of event where many of the roads are blocked off. A human driver would have been navigating the blocked roads throughout the day and already know where to go to avoid the crowds, where as Waymo naively follows its navigation system and gets stuck in a bunch of traffic for no reason.
It also drives annoyingly slowly which leads to frustration from human drivers who constantly try to overtake you.
(There's a slight component where as primarily a cyclist I feel that Waymos are much nicer to cyclists than human drivers are and it gives me affinity to Waymos that I don't feel for human drivers in the city.)
I find Waymo the most useful to take after a concert far from a MUNI stop because usually surge pricing makes Lyft and Uber really expensive and I'm usually tired enough to not want to walk to a stop or it's late enough that MUNI headways are far apart.
As someone who lives in a city without Waymo, I'm curious -- are you allowed to ride in the front seat?
I can generally tolerate riding in the front passenger seat, as long as the driver is competent, but I suffer a bit riding in the rear. And don't get me started on what it's like riding in a limo...
It would be cool if you can configure the ride preferences for how aggressive you'd like it to drive.
When did you take it? They’ve started taking freeways in January, including for intracity trips [1].
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/watch-waymos-self-driving...
I tried it in Phoenix in May and it wouldn’t take the freeway. And it’s definitely not generally available in the Bay area. (I take them every week or two.)
So I was pretty annoyed after I got into the car and then realized that the route it selected was going through a bunch of hills and side streets that would take twice as long as the most direct route (via Google Maps) and there's nothing I could do to change that once the ride started.
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless...
[1] - https://abc7news.com/waymo-sf-attacked-self-driving-car-inci...
If I were to place my bets on the biggest risk it'll be YouTubers finding out how to fuck around with the cars in unexpected ways and potentially tricking them.
Here's a dumb example. If you use one of those phone apps that flashes your screen like a police siren, could you trick the car to pull over? Would it unlock the doors and allow you to just hop in? What if you put a dog shaped balloon in the road on front of it? Could you set up some confusing cones and get it to drive into a wall? Could you confuse it at a stoplight with a green flashlight and have it start driving?