Last week I used Waymo for the first time. I’d been looking forward to trying it out for a while and was glad to finally experience it for myself while in Phoenix for a wedding.
For anyone who’s experienced Tesla’s Autopilot before, it’s probably a bit less novel. I even found myself thinking that Autopilot does a better job, drives more confidently. On my rides, Waymo went exactly the speed limit, didn’t use highways, frequently inched its way into an intersection with no one around, and was extremely blinker-happy without changing direction.
So the self-driving part wasn’t even what stood out to me. It was something more unexpected:
When your Waymo arrives to pick you up, it feels like your car arrives.
Not someone else’s car, set up to their liking, the radio playing their music. Your car, displaying your initials, the AC set at your preferred temperature, Spotify connected to your account, playing your music. That was what’s novel.
Small talk with drivers has never been my strong suit, so the lack of social pressure is nice. The cars are all (mostly) the same, so you know exactly what to expect. The Jaguars are comfortable, a step up from most UberX or Lyfts, though you can tell differences in cabin wear. I’m curious to see how their second generation of cars will feel.
This isn’t to say I don’t have reservations. I worry about a monopolization of ride-hailing—there are parts of this development that I’m hesitant about. But as a hobby economist, it’s also hard to deny the infinitely better product it provides.
Autonomously self-driving (electric) cars are the future. I can’t wait for them to be so good and so prevalent that most people (myself included) don’t even need to own cars anymore. It’s amazing to see we’re on our way there.
Konstantin Obenland 