Ride into the Future with Waymo on Uber in Austin

I love that this is landing in Austin before the cybercab. I think it will really drive the competition for Tesla to put out an (actual) self driving car. Or maybe they pivot to the next hype train.

I've been riding Waymo in Austin for several months as an early. They service the central Austin area. In that area, they've generally been available within 5-10 minutes.

The routes it takes are optimized for safety, if you compare the time of arrival between Waymo and Google Maps it's typically 20-30% slower to get there.

Most of the rides have been without issue, but I have had some things happen:

- It hesitated in the middle of an unprotected left on Lamar and had a car honk at

- It used a bus-only lane.

- It stopped in the middle of the street to drop me off a couple of times, annoying other drivers.

- I've had it get stuck, and it called support to get it out.

Overall, they are great but imperfect right now; I'm sure they'll fix these as time goes on.

The only bummer here is that there's no guarantee of matching with a Waymo. You can set your ride preference to "increases chances" of getting a Waymo, but I wish there was an option to always get it if your ride starts and ends in their service area. It's a strange decision from Waymo to agree to this.

> Starting today, riders who request an UberX, Uber Green, Comfort, or Comfort Electric could be matched with a Waymo fully autonomous all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicle – at no additional cost.

That made legit laugh out loud. No additional cost? Are you for real Uber? It should be significantly cheaper.

As a consumer, I think this is great.

As for its impact on society, I worry. Famous investor Jeremy Grantham said recently "If the government does not smooth out the benefits of AI, you will have either starvation or revolution." Huge numbers of people rely on driving for their income. More importantly, automated driving can only lead to even more concentration of wealth. With human drivers, most of the income generated stays within the community. With automated drivers, most of the income goes to much fewer places and people.

Look, driving is one of those tasks that I actually do believe to be a great thing to be automated away. But given the history of society since the Internet I have 0 confidence that we'll be able to deal with the giant impacts related to further concentration of wealth.

So, I live in the corner of Austin (SE) where a lot of the Waymo autonomous cars are based, so they're on the road next to me a lot. At first, always with a human in the car, but lately without. So far, they don't do anything too crazy. What I am curious about is what happens when they become numerous on the road. Rumor has it that an earlier attempt in downtown Austin resulted in gridlock, with a bunch of self-driving cars stuck.

In a situation like that, humans are more likely to figure out that they need to break the rules in order to break the gridlock (although it certainly can happen with human drivers, but in almost 30 years of driving in Austin I've never experienced it). For obvious reasons, self-driving cars are not usually given this kind of programming.

Of course, if they're always a small percentage of the cars, it's not really an issue.

I was expecting a discount. In the onboarding it says "Prices are the same. You won't pay more for autonomous rides."

If that's the case, I would rather give my money to a human driver than just Uber.

Who is at fault if a Waymo is involved in an accident? Who pays who?

Wow, I wonder if they'll make it up north any time soon!

I don't think it's right to expect companies like this to do what is best for their workers or society at large. Nothing wrong with chasing profit, but don't expect them to be what capitalism never allowed them to become.

I just have some optimism left in me I guess. I really hope worker-owned companies or companies incorporated to chase after the public's interest take off in technology. In a purely capitalist context, it kind of makes a lot of sense. Consumers generate demand and they will do business with companies that have their interest in mind and provide the most value. But for that value to be generated, it usually means less profit for the corporation. But my hypothesis is that profit and growth are not always following the same linear path. A company can generate enough revenue to not just pay it's people but grow at a steady pace and even generate enormous amounts of profits to it's owners in the long run. while at the same time, it's priority would be generating the best value to it's users,customers and the public at large instead of short-term profits.

Take uber for example, until recently they were not even a profitable company, this is after 10+ years. I genuinely believe Uber provided a ton of value to the public at large, including myself. I spend a fortune at Uber. But that was not the goal of the company. To restate, if Uber focused on generating value to it's users and drivers/couriers, it can become a net positive in society and we would depend on it more. In the long run, it would be a monopoly like utility providers.

With Waymo, their priority is clearly profit, not the public interest. This means less employment and less quality of service. I'm sure it will generate a lot of profit in short term, but as much as I am a fan of Uber as a company, this is short-sighted. They will lose the public's trust with such moves and policy makers will have to regulate them a lot more. They will become a service the rich and privileged can afford but only in times of inconvenience. But they could have become more profitable than Walmart and Amazon combined. Think about it, they can dominate delivery, period! Amazon and Walmart are inconvenient and costly middle-men.

In short, businesses should provide not just a barely viable service or products, but they should provide a product their customers want, even at loss sometimes (loss-leaders and all), so long as it is the best strategy for long term profitability. Structuring a company so that it will always prioritize long term viability make sense, and I hope to see that sort of thinking prevail.

What a lame future.