The car’s headlights appeared along the edge of San Francisco’s Powell Street. It drove up and pulled over along the sidewalk like any other taxicab to pick us up. With a soft click of the doors, the car beckoned us to sit down in the back seats, a soft voice guiding us to put on our seatbelts so the car could start its trip.
Companies like Cruise and Waymo are spearheading the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry with public robo-taxis already deployed to cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
Similar to rideshare services like Uber or Lyft, you set a pickup and drop-off point in the app. A few minutes after confirming your trip, a driverless car will be summoned to your location to take you on your trip.
For our first trip, we took a Cruise vehicle from San Francisco’s Little Italy to the center of the city. This allowed us to experience what the company’s targeted user base would see on a regular day. Currently, most Cruise vehicles open to the San Francisco public only operate from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
We also tested a Waymo car during rush hour traffic on a Tuesday morning to get a better idea of daily commute using one of these cars. Waymo is currently available to the public 24/7
Both companies’ vehicles include touch screens and audio cues that give you instructions on how to use the car and begin the ride. After the initial few minutes of being dumbfounded, staring at the steering wheel move, we barely remembered we were in an AV, free to do whatever we pleased.
At the end of the trip, the user automatically pays the car through the app, without the need to tip a robot! With the Cruise vehicle, we paid $15.77 for a 4.4-mile trip, while the rush-hour Waymo trip cost $10.45 to travel 1.6 miles.
Autonomous vehicles operate through the use of sensor arrays which are positioned around the car to ensure full sensing at all times. These sensors include LiDAR (light/laser-based range finding), Radar (Radio wave-based range finding), and cameras placed around the car to allow the car to create a recreation of its surroundings in software.
This attractive technology has now led nearly 100,000 people to download the Waymo One app, which now has a waitlist since its fleet size is only about 250 in the city.
It’s hard to feel like you aren’t in the future entering San Francisco, where you’ll likely see your first AV within 10 minutes of roaming around downtown, no matter the time of day.
Over the past few months, these cars have started to receive major backlash due to new changes in California legislation and safety concerns. In August, a California commission voted to allow self-driving car companies to commercially operate their AVs 24/7, putting the 10,000-odd ride-hail drivers in San Francisco at risk of losing their jobs.
In addition to this, there are many safety concerns regarding how these vehicles react to unprecedented situations. According to the San Francisco Fire Department, there have been over 70 documented cases of Autonomous Vehicles interfering with first responders, with multitudes of these delays resulting in “poor patient outcomes.”
Just weeks after we tried out Cruise’s AVs in San Francisco, the California DMV banned all of its vehicles from operating in the state, following a series of car accidents. Most notably, the DMV noted a specific instance, in which a Cruise vehicle failed to notice a woman pinned underneath the car, and proceeded to drag her 20 feet at nine miles per hour.
Apart from the transportation industry, autonomous vehicles are now being pioneered in a series of other industries. Earlier this year, Mountain View-based startup Nuro started testing autonomous vehicles in the Palo Alto area.
Nuro’s vehicles are designed to autonomously deliver consumer products, partnering with brands such as Dominoes, 7-Eleven, and Walmart. Because AVs eliminate the need for human drivers, these vehicles can greatly reduce the costs associated with “last mile delivery,” the most expensive part of the delivery process.
But, it’s not just about getting your hot pizza delivered to your door for a fraction of the cost. Nuro’s vision also extends towards mapping and hardware technology, working towards safer autonomous vehicle technology to mitigate the problems that companies such as Cruise are currently facing.
“We’re building the autonomy, building the hardware, and then you know, delivering your groceries, pizza and 7-Eleven at the same time,” Katie Stevens, the Head of Policy at Nuro, said. “That’s a lot of work all at once.”
For example, in Nuro’s newest vehicle, the company introduced an external airbag system, which would protect pedestrians in the event of an unavoidable crash — one of the first companies to do so.
While Nuro hasn’t launched in the Palo Alto area yet, they plan to roll out their delivery service to consumers for beta testing by the end of 2023.
“As we continue to improve the autonomy, we look at rolling out more on the public roads in Palo Alto in the Bay Area, then more scalable commercialization within the Palo Alto service area,” Stevens said.
As we stepped out of our vehicle, the car bid us farewell, chiming, “Thank you for riding with Cruise.” Humming away into the soft glow of the city, its sensors whirred away as it went to pick up the next customer waiting for a vehicle.
