Waymo has announced the expansion of its robotaxi service to 27 square miles of Silicon Valley for a limited set of customers. Most notably, it’s the area including Waymo’s own new headquarters in Mountain View, as well as Google HQ and “X” HQ, the two organizations that birthed Waymo. It includes parts of Los Altos, Palo Alto and a small piece of Sunnyvale.
I took a ride in the territory from Waymo’s new HQ to its old one. The ride was, as expected, smooth but confident–better than last year in San Francisco, other than a slightly jarring bounce over a speed bump. Waymo employees were starting to summon vehicles to the HQ, whose parking lot it knows well.
The last time I rode a Waymo in this area was on highway 85 in 2012, but back then I was working for the team and was behind the wheel in the safety driver role to provide feedback to the team. I had taken the special driving school course that anybody taking that role had to take up at a racetrack north of San Francisco to improve one’s reactions. And indeed, back then, the car entered a mode where it was vibrating and I had to take control. Something that still happens today in my Tesla with FSD.
To my annoyance, the new service area does not include my own home. It’s outsize the zone, though inside Waymo’s operation permit. I’m hoping they’ll expand the zone soon.
The progress over those 13 years is of course tremendous. Then, I was ready to grab the wheel. Today, I sat in the back seat and soon was paying no attention to the ride, even though the whole purpose of the ride was to do that.I
’m also hoping they add an extra service to it, to link the Silicon Valley and San Francisco service areas. I would like to get a robotaxi at my home, and have it take me to a small staging lot near one of the freeways. There, I would like to see some sort of shared service, such as cars or vans leaving every 5-10 minutes which would carry others to a similar location in San Francisco, where a set of personal Waymos would be waiting for all of us to hop into to get to our final destination. (If 2 or more of us had the same destination we might use the same vehicle.) This shuttle could be a robotaxi for 4, or a van or even bus, today human driven but eventually a robot. Because all of us would share it, the cost for the bulk of the miles would be low. The cost for the door to door trip would be more than an $8 Caltrain ticket but much less than a $100 Uber. If the shuttle leaves every 5 minutes, I’ll wait. If it leaves every 10-15 minutes we would set my pickup to meet it with precision. (Every 30 minutes and it could take me to the train–Waymo has a deal with some transit lines to subsidize the ride if you take a Waymo to it.)
That makes the service much more valuable. Almost everybody in Silicon Valley owns a car (seemingly always a Tesla but attitudes are changing for political reasons.) Parking is almost always free It makes competition harder. A long trip creates a greater chance for value; without the need to drive options open up. Indeed, with typical parking in downtown SF costing $30 or more, plus 100 miles of usage cost on the car, it becomes possible to get very competitive. However, as the low ridership of the Caltrain shows, the trip time must not increase very much.
Today you must get an invite to use the service in Silicon Valley. Past patterns suggest this will end before too long. Also coming soon should be ability to use the freeways–Waymo is already taking employees, in the back seat, on those. Also high on the desired list would be access to SJC and SFO airports. SFO airport faces problems because it is operated by the city of SF, which is not a Waymo fan. SJC airport is not in their permitted service area.
Also interesting will be Waymo’s planned experiments with subscription fees rather than Uber style taxi service with taxi prices. The real goal of the robotaxi is not to replace Uber or Uber drivers, even though today’s pilots look like that. The bigger purpose is car replacement (and replacement of many other transport forms.)
The team at Waymo is clearly excitied to see their product come to where they live. Indeed I was a bit surprised it took so long. It’s always good to have your staff really using your product all the time; you get an understanding that doesn’t come from just watching others. And Tesla engineering HQ is just outside the service area–you could walk it–so it’s also good for people to use competitor’s products regularly too.
