Only Using Driverless Cars for a Week

this is a driverless car picking me up for the very first time hey there Sam and this is me just now realizing I'm climbing into a very empty vehicle this is so crazy for the next week this will be my only form of transportation to really see what the future could look like if you've ever been curious about how these cars work or maybe you're not quite ready to try it for yourself over the next few minutes we'll cover it all we'll talk about how it works my experience throughout the week and even some crazy situations that happened let's Dive Right In so these cars are operated by a company called waymo this video isn't sponsored or affiliated with them in any way they've just been testing here in Phoenix for years now and recently became available on the App Store just like other ride sharing apps now it's currently only available in these two mapped areas of Phoenix but within those zones it works pretty much like Uber or Lyft which still feels unreal to me you can request a car at different stops but with the significant difference of having no driver which means no rating system no tipping and you have the car all to yourself the cars themselves are really nice and fitted with a bunch of sensors to help them navigate if you're curious to learn more about how all of the tech Works I'd recommend reading more on waymo's website which I'll link in the description below but of course the real reason you're here is to find out what it's like to ride in these for an entire week how many miles did I go how much time did I spend does it feel like the future well let's start off with day one my very first trip was to the grocery store to get some snacks for a random taste test because that sounded fun parm crisps they're really salty I actually vlogged pretty much the entire time but uh that road noise is killer so we'll just um put all that footage right in the trash I'm half kidding I'll use what I can but it really just wasn't that interesting you can't even tell that I'm in a driverless car ah but that first day I did three trips and I was just surprised by how normal it felt the car handled really well although just on that first day I caught myself doing things like looking both ways as it went through intersections without even thinking about it surprisingly I did have two incidents happen on one trip I was headed to Home Depot and the car got super confused in the parking lot and ended up pulling over at a weird angle ahead of my drop-off location it told me the ride was over but later I got a notification to stay in the car so it was clearly having some issues waymo ended up refunding the ride maybe because it was just a weird ending but then something crazier happened on the way home I'll show you the footage that I do have which wasn't my best work but this one deserves a demonstration as we approached an intersection there was a line of cars in the Middle Lane however it was so backed up that the waymo didn't realize this was actually the left turning lane backed up further than usual that's understandable so as we got further along the road the waymo put on its turn signal and tried to merge now we're just hoping that someone is nice enough to let us in but as you can understand we're cutting off a bunch of people and holding up a through Lane so it's not the best situation ultimately No One lets us in so we continue driving towards the intersection and the unthinkable happens the waymo comes to a Full Stop in the intersection while the light is green there's no turning Arrow but tries to merge with the turning lane again we're getting honked at I have major secondhand embarrassment but there's clearly nothing I can do and then instead of just accepting the loss and rerouting it just creates a second turning lane and makes the turn so not the best Showcase of the technology on my very first day but I'll address its performance as a whole at the end of the week for the next few days I ended up doing tons of errands around this little pocket of Phoenix some of which were just normal things like going to the dentist or getting groceries and other times I wanted to check out the amenities of the park down here versus the amenities of the park over here which just happened to be an exact opposite corners of the waymo service area that's crazy but by the end of the week I was completely trusting this car and I would actually lose track of where I was in the city if you think about services like Uber or Lyft I feel like you often give additional details to your driver about where you want to get dropped off or making sure they don't miss that turn that everyone always seems to miss but that doesn't happen here you can select where you want to get dropped off down to the side of the street and pretty much exact location and then you know at the end of your ride you'll end up right there it almost felt more like riding in a train than a car but along with that one of the drawbacks is that it does feel a bit slower I think this will improve over time but I didn't have any trips where it took me on a freeway even though it would have been much faster too I think they're testing that right now but maybe not per public rides yet and the cars also love to take side streets that are slower than main roads I believe this is for safety or to avoid a tricky or busier intersections I had the luxury of not worrying too much about my time doing this so I just enjoyed the ride and relaxed but I could see if you needed to get somewhere really fast it doesn't seem optimized for that however the time estimates for pickup and arrival did seem to be pretty accurate that made planning things like my dentist appointment much easier in some ways unfortunately the dentist office was outside of the service area so I had to take the car to a random spot walk about 10 minutes out of the zone and then walk back in before getting the car again just one of the limitations to the service area currently now throughout my week I also had a lot of interactions with people as you can imagine you get a lot of looks and a lot of comments you know sometimes it's pretty cool to be climbing out of a futuristic car and feel like an important person but other times maybe you're running to the store to get a gallon of milk in your sweatpants and then maybe you don't want all the attention but the craziest situation of the week week was that I had a guy call the cops on the waymo that I was getting in because he didn't think driverless cars should be on the road it was a strange situation but ultimately diffused quickly it threw me for a loop and was just so bizarre but in general a lot of people just comment about how cool or crazy it is or just look a lot while you're stopped at red lights now the car itself is really nice I believe they have a minivan variation as well but I only ever got the Jaguar i-pace which is all electric and it was always clean and really comfortable they have a nice touch screen where you can visualize the surroundings play music or change the temperature this is such a small thing but every time I climbed in I would adjust the temperature down by one or two degrees and I feel like it would be really nice if waymo knew my preference and would set the car to that as it was on its way to pick me up that's my one feature request in the car they also have wet wipes and an insert like you'd find in an airplane seat my current car is also super basic so I love the sunroof and the flush door handles that you unlock with the app when the car pulls up real nice okay now let's talk about how much driving I actually did and my final thoughts in total I went 76 miles and I spent four hours and 50 minutes in the cars I didn't necessarily have a goal to hit a certain amount of time but I'm pretty happy with that considering it only takes about 20 minutes to drive from corner to corner in this zone so I had to be creative with the errands that I needed to run now the cost for all this is a little wonky because I had a 50 coupon to use throughout the week I'm not special or anything I believe it's just a promotion to get more people using it but with that in total I spent a hundred and ten dollars and 75 cents or about a dollar 46 per mile if that's useful for anyone the cost even without the promotion seems pretty comparable to other ride sharing apps for longer distances but for shorter distances and for peak hours it seems to be much cheaper also factoring in the Tipping situation that does help with the cost I know it's always a touchy subject talking about new tech like this that could eventually replace some jobs but I think there's still so much more that has to get figured out before these cars are everywhere for my final thoughts about how I felt about the entire experience I mean I honestly had a blast assuming the price is the same or cheaper I would definitely use it going forward surprisingly after that first day I'd didn't have any other incidents or car issues the car never took a corner too fast never missed a turn or had any other mess-ups which was really impressive it even handled a few tricky situations like construction or people being in the road just like any other driver would there were a couple times the app said a specialist would be in the car with me but once I booked the ride it would always say Rider only which was exactly what I was hoping for my wife and I also went in one together and we really enjoyed spending time driving somewhere where neither of us had to focus on the actual Act of driving but we could still have the car to ourselves I think it's interesting as I reflect on giving up that aspect of the driving experience you're literally giving up control of the car but you gain control of your time now how you spend that time is the real question I know I do a lot of thinking and processing while I drive and I just wonder if the future is going to be using these cars to read a book or spend time with others or just look out the window and think or will it just be more time that we're spending on our phones or feeling pressure to work

Channel: Sam Beige

Views: 31,524

Keywords: waymo, #waymo, autonomous, driverless, vehicle, no driver, ride sharing, challenge

Id: BGOLbk9yMgA

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023