California DMV approves map increase in Waymo driverless operations

I didn’t think I’d be so pro Waymo but anecdotally I had a fantastic experience with one recently.

I was at a music show very late ~1-2am in SF and walked out to grab an uber to the airbnb I was staying at. I kept getting assigned an uber, then I’d wait 10 minutes, then they’d cancel. Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes, mind you I even resorted to calling Lyfts at the same time and nothing bit. Then I say screw it and download Waymo. 1 minute and it’s accepted my ride, and I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot. 3 minutes and it picks me up. The car is clean, quiet, I can play my own music in it via Spotify, and it’s driving honestly more safely than some uber drivers I’ve had in SF. It’s one of the few things where the end result actually lives up to the promise from a tech company.

Not saying this HAS to happen. But I remember when Ubers were clean, quiet, cheap too. I think you are just looking at a product before the enshittification, when they still have to pretend they care about your comfort.

Uber, when it was launched, was limos only, and would come (with ETA) when cabs would not. It was expensive.

The story they told is that they were unable to get a ride. That’s not enshittification, that’s simply scammers on the platform not doing their job.

That won’t happen with robots.

They might raise the prices, or clean the cars less frequently, but if it shows up and runs the program, it won’t ever get worse than that.