Waymo One: Autonomous, Future, Comfortable, Available | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep33

Waymo One: Autonomous, Future, Comfortable, Available | Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick Ep33

English Transcript

Jeff Frick:
Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here coming to you from the home studio for another episode of 'Turn the Lens.'

Some big news over the last couple days, Waymo announced, Waymo, the spin out of Google Alphabet self-driving car, basically wiped out the wait list in San Francisco. So now, if you want to ride in a Waymo self-driving taxi in San Francisco, just put the app on your phone and you're ready to go. Ironically, I finally got to take my first ride in a Waymo autonomous vehicle just a couple days ago. I was in the city. Opportunity presented itself. I think I must have been the last person to get cleared off the waitlist, and so I was able to jump in, get my Waymo and ride it across town. So I recorded it. Wanted to share that video with you here so you can kind of see what it was like from the back of the Waymo taxi. So it was interesting. And now it's available to everybody and certainly something you should check it out. Try it out. The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. So without further ado, my ride with Waymo in San Francisco just a couple days ago.

Jeff Frick:
Okay, so I am in the future.

Waymo Car:
Hello from Waymo. As we get going, just give us one minute to cover a few riding tips. This experience may feel futuristic, but the need to buckle up is the same as always. So keep your seatbelt fastened please. If you're traveling with little ones, the microphones are only unlocked when you're connected to rider support. So sing your heart out. We can't hear you. You can also use the app or passenger screen to speak to a rider support agent at any time. In the rare case of an emergency, please keep your seatbelt fastened and remain in the car unless there's an urgent need to exit. Rider support will connect with you and provide assistance. Finally, relax and thank you for riding with us.

Jeff Frick:
Okay, so I'm riding in the future here. I just got my first ever Waymo autonomous vehicle. And of course, I'm leaving a GenAI show. I walked to earlier, but my dogs are tired, so I'm gonna take the Waymo back across San Francisco, basically from Dogpatch to City Hall a couple miles. I’m using my director cut (camera feature) to both simultaneously see the front. So we already had a left hand turn that went pretty smooth. We’re in the nice Jaguar, which I don't get to drive Jaguars very much. Shout out to L-- P--------. He’s a Jaguar fan. They selected the music for me I guess. It's very pleasant.

Going up 3rd towards Oracle (Park, home of San Francisco Giants) and at Oracle there's a Giants game tonight. The Cubs are in town. So I think we’re going to route around that because it's probably a mess. Got my little map down here telling me where we're going. Don't have the app open on the phone because I got the camera open. So anyway, I talk a lot about autonomy and how autonomy is going to change the game. And this is a little bit of the future right here.

There's been some issues with some of the autonomous vehicles. The (GM’s) Cruise ones had their license revoked, I think, in San Francisco or their permit, whatever it was to operate. But Waymo's still going strong, they are also in Phoenix. And they've been doing this for a little while. I have to dig up the details in the post, but pretty, pretty wild. And it's something that we've known is coming for a long, long time.

It was interesting. On my walk, I saw one that was waiting for its rider to get in. Can you please turn the music down? (my bad, microphones aren’t activated) Yielding to an emergency vehicle. I’m just going to turn the music off. I’ll turn it down. There we go.

And it was weird, the Waymo was waiting for a younger kid getting into it, and it was waiting for him across the street, and it was blocking a driveway that somebody was trying to get into. So it just picks a safe place and the kid ran over and got in, and the person got into the driveway. But, you know, there's still a little kinks here and there. There's always going to be edge cases, but it's all about experience. And it's also a lot about the 80% solution or 90% solution for most of the time when you don't have those edge cases.

Remember I interviewed the Phantom Auto guys who could take control of autonomous vehicles from a central location to get them out of kind of stuck situations, but the market wasn't even ready for them. I think they may have even shut down, unfortunately, because they were just way ahead of the market.

So we're cruising now past the medical center, cutting across town, underneath the 101. (280 actually) And doing pretty good on the green lights too. So far pretty smooth. I don't know, maybe there’s not much to say because it's all going pretty smooth. I do like this cool director view in the Samsung.

It's kind of like, BeReal, but I can run it the whole time. So we just completely avoided the Giants game. Go, Giants. Hopefully they beat the Cubs. They just got beat up on by the Cardinals I believe. Pretty bright sunlight coming down, and there’s no indicators that I can see as to what the car sees beyond, you know, kind of the standard map view. It’s got a support thing. It's got a pullover. I got 15 minutes to get across town, maybe I’ll call support just to say hello.

Car is super clean, of course. Can I see how much gas it's got? Haven’t had any really challenging, pedestrian situations yet? My arm’s getting tired from holding my phone. So I'm just cruising. Comes to a full stop. It's kind of a zigzag, so it must be kind of Google Maps like, in that it kind of routes the way that I wouldn't necessarily drive as the straightest route, but it knows, I guess, the ways to avoid the traffic because we haven't hit any of it yet.

It's kind of odd. I think maybe they should have a talking driver use a ChatGPT that it can have a conversation, ask questions while they're driving. Again, the really cool thing about autonomous vehicles is they can actually see every way at the same time where we can't as people, right? You gotta turn your head left, turn your head right, but they can actually. Here we go, those guys are, like, challenging, jumping out in front of it to see if they could freeze us, and they backed off. So there is that is a thing. People try to confuse the cars. They stand in the sidewalk. They do all kinds of things, which at the end of the day, just becomes part of the learning dataset. And now I see the, the view down below had those pedestrians jumping out into the, into the crosswalk, but then they backed off.

Yeah, full stops. We haven't had a really complicated intersection. Yeah, but we're certainly driving straight into the sun. So if you had optical issues, this would be a problem.

If you're in a hurry, it's not like some of the wild, the wild Uber drivers that you get sometimes that are just screaming across the city. It's a comfortable, very stress-free ride so far. Kind of cruising through the neighborhood here. Lots of stop signs. It's not lots of traffic, which is good. And my feet are feeling very happy not to be walking. Okay, here's another one coming this way, I believe. Yeah, there's another one, so. Or no, that's somebody else's autonomous vehicle. So that's part of living in San Francisco is not only do you have production vehicles like this one for Waymo. Oh that's a xxxx one. Oh that was a little bit of a complicated one. People kind of stopped and started. But you also have all these startups that are constantly driving around. So you'll see cars, often with all kinds of bolted-on things, bolted-on sensors and lidars and cameras and, and things which are... that was just kind of tricky around this little island thing.

You know, so many companies are trying to solve this puzzle, and ultimately they'll be safer than people. Not because people can't drive well, but unfortunately, many people drive distracted and they are texting, or they're thinking about an issue they had at home with the kids or with the spouse or with the job. And it's really about distracted driving, which is the huge advantage that autonomous vehicles have. They certainly have different challenges, but, you know, there will come a day, I believe, in the not-so-distant future that, you know, people aren't going to drive.

I mean, you already see it a little bit in terms of the priority for people for kids in getting their driver's license. It's not quite. When I was 16, it represented freedom. Now kids have their phones now, that's how they travel the world and talk to their friends and meet, this and that. So, the car doesn't quite represent the freedom that it used to. It was a nice clean lane change.

Are we going up 6th (street)? No, we’re not going to go up 6th (street). We’ll probably get people throw shit at us, I assume. 6th street, if you don't know, if you're not from San Francisco, is, don't go there. Sixth, just south of Market. Unless you're looking for drugs or trouble. It's best not to go to 6th (street) in San Francisco. Those two blocks off of Market.

So we’re making our way across Harrison Street. We’re going up 9th (street) which is good. I wonder if it's programmed to avoid 6th. You know, part of the beauty of software is you can constantly update it based on new information. And, I would imagine, hopefully some computer programmer has been on 6th and knows to route around it.

As we cruise up towards City Hall, must admit the time is seven minutes to go. I can't remember what the price of this ride was, like $17 or something. Not super cheap. There's surge pricing right now because of the Giants game, so many people. I think they just got back from a road trip as well. So people are excited.

There you go. Now you can see on the display, the active showing of all the other cars and what's going on. That was a motorcycle there on the right. I'm always thinking on my Onewheel, it’s my obligation on my Onewheel to train these things to deal with EUCs. I can't see the pedals. I don't know if the pedals are moving. The Phantom Auto guys liked using Fords. And I think Jaguar is owned by Ford. It might be because they had API connections to the controls. So the gas, brakes, turning, etc. had easy access so all their demo cars were Fords, if I recall.

We start coming up to Market Street. I hope this video comes out. I don't think I've ever done a director's cut. Coming up on the back of Bill Graham (Civic Auditorium). Which way is he going to go, or she, it? Do Waymo's have names? Do they each have a name? They should give them a name. That should be another thing. Give them a name. Or maybe you can choose a name to talk to it. But I think that would add to the experience.

Here you can see even pedestrians on the sidewalk are tracked. See if it sees that biker over there on the corner. He's off on this bike now. I don't think it got it. So we're coming up towards the Van Ness. I’m sorry I’m wearing the glasses. As you can see, it's extremely bright and you just don't want to see my squinty face. That's not very entertaining. All right, so it's going to go round. And it's a little tricky around here where you can turn left, where you cannot. Excuse me, where you can turn left. Where you cannot turn left. And how you approach the destination. So it looks like it's going to come in from Franklin and actually drop me off across the street, which will be just fine, because I think part of the programming is trying to find the safe.

Drop off and pick up. It listed 777 Tennessee on my pick up but it moved a little bit away from that. But it waited for me. And then as soon as I got close, I could unlock the door and jump in.

Jeff Frick:
You know, it's funny. The motorcycles look like, those are two scooters. They look like scooters. I guess because you can see the body, maybe. There they are over there. Okay, so here we go. Civic Center. Coming around the back of Davies Symphony Hall. Very close to the portal. Tommaso (Trionfi) and his portal are close to here, another futuristic product. (Shared Studios Portal) Step into the future. And again, it's only appropriate doing this after going to a DataStax AI conversation.

Jeff Frick:
Okay, we're almost there. Don't forget your phone, keys, or bag. Okay, good, I won’t. I’ll try not to do that.

Waymo Car:
For your safety, the doors will remain locked when we arrive.

Jeff Frick:
Okay.

Waymo Car:
Pull the handle twice to exit. The first pull unlocks, the second opens the door.

Jeff Frick:
Okay, so if it's an unsafe situation, your doors are not unlocked when you get there. Good to know. There's our destination up ahead on the back of City Hall. Where’s it taking me? Oh, I’ve never. I’ve been coming to this location for more years than I can count. And I've never stopped or picked up here. All right, so is this the spot? All right? This is the spot.

Waymo Car:
You are here. Please make sure it's clear before exiting.

Jeff Frick:
So I do the double. Do it once, twice. All right. Thank you very much Waymo. All right, so there was my Waymo ride. My Waymo autonomous vehicle ride. Put me into the fence I guess. That's it. Is it going to drive off or wait for me in the, ended on the app. I better jump over to the app and check. Oop, it just locked. There it goes. Thanks for the ride Waymo.

Jeff Frick:
All right. So that was an interesting experience. First time ever. Thank you Waymo. And if you're in San Francisco, I think they're also operating in Phoenix. Maybe another city. Check it out. A little taste of the future. Jeff Frick signing off. Take care. Bye bye.

So that was it. It was pretty wild. And, you know, in watching that video after the fact to see the estimated time of arrival changed quite a bit. The path that it took was not something that I would have taken. As I mentioned, there was a Giants game.

They had just come back. It was actually Willie Mays night, which I didn't realize at the time. And the Cubs are in town. So there was a lot of traffic around Oracle Park, so it routed around there and came in a way that I've never come to a location that I've stopped at hundreds of times over the years. So it was a really interesting experience.

So, get the Waymo app if you're in San Francisco. Try it out. It's not super fast because it stops at every stop sign. And it feels pretty safe. And it's not racing to get you to your destination. But it takes its time and it gets you there safely. So kind of a full circle moment because the Waymo hive we used to call it is not that far from my house, where they were doing a lot of the development. We've seen the vehicles evolve over time from these little round ones to little SUVs to minivans to, I think the latest version is a version of a Jaguar small SUV. But it's a pretty wild experience. And now it's available to all.

So I just wanted to share this video since I finally got to have my ride. And, who knew I was the last one to get off the waitlist before they opened up to everyone? So, check it out. Just by chance, I happened to go to a book party at our local bookstore, Kepler's, and see Ray Kurzweil and his daughter Amy as they release their new book, which is called *The Singularity Is Nearer*. And there's some really interesting concepts, on longevity escape velocity and some other things. He's a pretty thoughtful and deep thinker.

Hope you enjoyed that video. Hope you get a chance to ride in a Waymo next time you're in San Francisco. I would definitely encourage you to give it a try.

Like we always say, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening on the podcast. Be sure to like, subscribe and share with a friend.
Take care. Jeff Frick signing off. Bye bye.

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