Why a Waymo is like a horse

I vividly remember the first time that I buckled my 8-year-old son into a 4,000 pound, AI powered robot, pressed a button, and sent us careening through the streets of San Francisco with no one behind the steering wheel.

We were riding a Waymo, one of the first self-driving cars to offer public rides in selected U.S. cities, our own city of San Francisco included.

After a few minutes of riding, I asked my son what he thought. “I feel . . .” he said, taking a long pause before responding, “. . . uncomfortable. But, it’s really cool!”

I suspect he’s not alone in feeling that way. According to data from AAA, 61% of Americans consider themselves “afraid” to ride in a self-driving car, with only 13% saying that they fully trust the technology. 

Yet people are immensely fascinated by these AI-powered machines–and surprisingly inclined to use them. A study in the journal Science and Public Policy explored early public dialogue around self-driving vehicles, finding that “The investment and excitement surrounding self-driving vehicles are huge.”

That’s borne out by real-world data. In cities like San Francisco that adopted self-driving tech, autonomous rides now account for over 25% of all rideshare trips, surpassing the market share of companies like Lyft. Waymo has nearly 1,000 self-driving cars cruising the city’s streets on any given day.

I ride self-driving Waymo vehicles 2–3 times per week, and here’s what I can tell you: They’re surprisingly boring. And that’s their superpower.

Summon the robots

When I tell friends and colleagues from other cities about my Waymo habit, they usually assume that summoning a self-driving car requires some kind of high-tech, sci-fi-like process.

Perhaps there’s a glowing pendant you hold up in the sky, or some kind of supercomputing device that the company secretly issues to its cabal of riders. Maybe there are incantations.

In reality, the process of calling up a Waymo is almost exactly like booking an Uber or Lyft. Waymo has an app with a user interface that looks entirely cribbed from the apps of its human-driven competition. 

You specify your destination, enter a credit card, and watch as a little animated car slowly approaches you on a map. Except instead of meeting John in a Kia Optima with a 4.93 rating, your vehicle is an anonymous robot with a rapidly spinning laser scanner on top.

When your Waymo arrives, it pulls to the side of the road, trying its best not to block traffic. As annoyed human drivers curse under their breath and assertively careen around you (just like with a real Uber!), you climb inside, buckle your seatbelt, and press a button on the dashboard.

Its steering wheel spinning as if controlled by some benign, rideshare-giving poltergeist, your Waymo turns into traffic, and you’re off.

During my first Waymo trip, I felt much like my son—nervous, excited, in awe of the tech. By my second Waymo ride, it was already starting to feel old-hat. 

Today, after more than a year of riding the cars all over San Francisco, it feels entirely normal. The fact that I’m being chauffeured around town by an AI-powered, laser-studded robot barely registers. 

What does register is the surprisingly delightful sensory experience of riding in one of these super high-tech cars—and the immense, almost subversive pleasure of being totally alone.

No person, please

Sartre famously said “Hell is other people.” He was talking about the existential angst of the human condition. But he could just as easily have been describing a bad Uber ride.

As a professional news and travel photographer, I’ve taken a lot of Ubers. And while most drivers are great, I’ve had some truly bad experiences.

I’ve had drivers who appear to be on substances, who ask me probing questions about my life (one demanded to know, point-blank, “How much do you make per year?” and was unwilling to accept a noncommittal answer without a dollar figure attached), and drivers who seem to believe my airport ride across the Bay Bridge is secretly a time trial on the Nuremberg ring.

And I’m lucky—many experiences are far worse. Data from the Government Accountability Office shows that over 4,600 people were sexually assaulted in rideshare vehicles in 2019. At least 19 people were killed in rideshare-related assaults. Both drivers and riders are at risk.

To be clear, the vast majority of traditional rideshare trips end well, and rideshare companies are doing more and more to keep people safe. 

Still, even if a trip isn’t outright dangerous, there are times where you simply don’t feel like sharing space with another person–smelling their cologne, breathing their air, and answering their questions about your life.

Without a human driver, Waymos offer something that no rideshare vehicle can provide—solitude. As you cruise through your city in one of the company’s cars, you’re present in the world around you. Yet simultaneously, you’re totally alone.

Relaxing spa music plays over the car’s speakers. The leather-wrapped seats are clean and cool to the touch (Waymo uses Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, a luxury electric SUV that retails for over $75,000). A map shows your surroundings and ride time, complete with cheerful icons representing cyclists, pedestrians and fellow drivers.

It’s pleasant, almost meditative. And people appear to love it. Again, when given the choice between Waymo and traditional rideshare vehicles, San Franciscans are increasingly choosing Waymo–even though a study by the rideshare data company Obi shows Waymo rides cost up to $11 more.

Why? As Obi’s Chief Revenue Officer told TechCrunch, they like being alone.

Back to the future

Self-driving car skeptics usually criticize the tech on safety grounds, or claim that it’s an overhyped, faddish technology that riders will try once and abandon. Most critics compare the tech to traditional rideshares.

What they’re missing is the fact that riding in a self-driving car isn’t like a traditional rideshare at all. 

Indeed, the whiz-bang sci-fi coolness of the tech quickly becomes boring. It’s the unique solitude and independence of the experience—not the fancy AI tech—that makes it an entirely new way of traveling.

As with public transit, you’re moving through your city without needing to directly move yourself. Yet on public transit, you’re always surrounded by other people. Here, you’re not. 

In a private car, you’re alone. But you can never direct your attention away from the road for long enough to truly notice and experience your surroundings.

During a recent Waymo ride, I realized that the technology reminded me most of a far older piece of transportation tech—the horse.

If you’ve ever ridden on horseback, you know that you can never truly control your horse—you can merely suggest to it where you’d like it to go, and trust that the horse—an autonomous entity capable of acting on its own–will decide to act on your suggestions.

You also can’t crash a horse. If you direct your attention away from the task of riding—or even drop the reins entirely—your horse will keep right on following its path. It can sense the space around it, and wants to walk into a tree even less than you do.

As a kid, I even remember riding on old rental horses that knew their trails and routines so well, they’d turn around and head back to the stable of their own accord when your 60 minutes of riding time was up. 

Riding a Waymo feels similar. You’re in charge to a degree, but ultimately you’re ceding the task of moving your body to an independent, non-human intelligence.

You give up control, yes. But you gain something else—the ability to move through the world while fully experiencing it. 

Alone and freed from the task of directing your own movement, you can open the window and watch city life unfold around you in an almost cinematic way—or just close your eyes and truly tune out for a moment.

The AI is the boring part

If the AI powering your Waymo constantly made its presence known, it would distract from this experience. Instead, the fact that the AI tech quickly becomes mundane—unnoticable, even–facilitates this entirely new way of moving.

Last month, I took another first-time rider on a Waymo trip; my Boomer-age mom. Seated behind the non-existent driver, my mom told me she quickly forgot we were riding in an AI robot. We could chat and catch up without another person eavesdropping on—or perhaps joining in—our conversation. 

It was a pleasant ride. Waymo’s AI facilitated the experience, but nothing about it felt especially high-tech or futuristic.

Ultimately—beyond the economics, or the novelty, or the safety—that’s why self-driving cars will succeed. They’re a uniquely pleasant way to get around. Their technology is boring, fading into the background. And that’s what makes them great.

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