What’s it like to be in a WayMo driverless car in Phoenix?

Well, here it is. Waymo says car will be here in five minutes, and it's gonna have my name on it and everything. All right. We just did something kind of cool. This is Brad Costanzo. What'd we just do?

It's called a robotic taxi.

A Waymo. Yeah. What's the. What's the first thing that you think of when you see the thing?

I mean, I think Jetsons were in the future. It's hard to believe that these things.

Actually exist right now. It's crazy.

So completely rope driverless.

Yeah. And they're on there. I just checked, looked it up. It's in. That's what I was trying to figure out what the hell was. It's a Jag. Okay. Kind of like a Jag suv. They look good, but they've got these big spinning wheel mirrors on them. Very different than like Tesla, which I've gone out for a Tesla ride. And first of all, they're really, really good. The autopilot auto drive. Scary good how aggressive it is. But these things completely pilot less. I don't know, like you said earlier about how are they getting by with the regulators.

Yeah, it's hard to. That regulators have let completely driverless cars out in the middle of the road with driver cars.

Yes. Mind blowing. So I'll show you a clip as soon as it pulls up, and then we'll do an interior shot also so you can check out what the experience is like. Here it is. Blinky things got my deal and a bunch of people got really pissed at it, so. Because it just stopped inside of the road. Yeah. Okay, let's open that up. Yeah, Yeah. I think we just got to put a in here. Hey there. Hi. Robo thing. All right. Cover a few riding tips. Okay. Look at that thing waiting.

So far, we're in the driverless crazy.

All right. It's talking to us. All right. Holy crap, man. This is just so trippy. All right. Oh, you have to put your seat belt on. It's gonna at you. All right, well, we know it's bitchy. That's for sure.

We can't hear you.

All right, now this is inside the Waymo. There's our non driver.

Very nice ride.

Yeah. So far it's surprisingly aggressive, very smart. And it's a shaguar. All right. Up front.

So here we are waiting for people. Waiting for people. He's looking at us. He's like, I'm not sure. Car's going by. All right. Creeping forward, turning. God dang it. This is so good. I can't believe it. Jesus. Wow. And it's pretty aggressive driving.

You know, I mean it's smooth, but it's.

Yeah, no, not uncomfortable at all. Definitely. If. If you wouldn't tell me otherwise, I would absolutely think it's a person.

I wouldn't be worried about this car. I'd be worried about everybody else.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was funny because when we. So first thing that happened when we were waiting for the camera car, it stopped on the side of the road.

And it traffic behind it.

Some guy honked at it because it was sitting and basically the middle of the street. Well, it. But it was like a bike path and there's a bike rider in front of us right now. And here's an example what it does. Oh, damn, this is great. It actually just went around them. There's the bike rider. So. And it's lane changing. I can't believe how aggressive this thing is. Intelligently aggressive. I don't feel the least bit unsafe lane changing. So it's calculating ahead.

So here's what happened. It just lane changed and it knew from quite a ways back. Certainly as good as a person. Better. I'd say better than most that there was a longer line to the left of us, only one car in front. It fairly aggressively lane changed over without being the least bit unsafe to get over here to optimize. So this thing knows how to. Here you can see behind us there's a lot more cars. That was a good smart move. Wow. Really impressive. As you can see ahead how it's creeping up. So it's staying well within the blind spot zone, but yet keeping up with traffic. Super safe distance but varying in speed a lot.

This is one of those things too that in a few years, years it's going to be. Man, you remember the first time you ever rode in a driverless.

It'll be like using a knife on. I really will. Yeah. I do think for sure. Well, the other thing that I was thinking about is I was just listening to the all in podcast yesterday and right now you know the next big thing is Tesla allowing us to put Tesla cars into a fleet and have.

It go earn money when you're not.

Totally. So you'll drive your car an average of less than an hour a day. Why not have it making money for you? In the meantime, it'll more than pay for itself. And what is that going to do for Uber and Lyft? And now at this point those apps have become so soggy. This is absolutely, positively the future. I welcome our overlords say please take care of. Hands off the wheel. I'm sure he's got a bunch of great sensors here looking for all the cameras.

Yeah, I think there'd be cameras off. Oh, there's one right here.

Right in the middle.

All right. I picked good music. I don't know if it grabbed anything about me on social or not. I gave it my Gmail account. So the question is, can we have four people in here or we automatically assumed we had to sit in the back. So we've been programmed now.

All right, Brad, so what else you were just saying something about thinking about.

The future that I. I think this is our first time in a driverless taxi and it's gonna be very soon. I think that we'll be looking back and this is a normal thing. And you remember the first time you did that, how crazy that was when we took it for granted that we had to actually drive at the same time. It's. Especially in the United States, more than any other place. I think it'll be hard to get people to give up their car for this because we associate cars with freedom. And I still love driving.

Yeah.

But man, I gotta ad. It's awesome. @ the same time, there is a degree of this thing is in charge. There's a little bit of that. What if, you know, we've seen too many sci fi movies. Like, what if it decides it doesn't like us? Yeah, you're.

Locked. I'm gonna tell that bastard to start behaving itself and hit it harder. You know, the answer is always scream at it louder and hit it harder. That's how you get what you want. No, I think I'm thinking about now is like, I love taking the train to la. I love it, but a lot of stops, it's noisy and the wi fi is crap along the tracks. It's terrible. So part of the reason you get on a train, it's like, well, I'm gonna get so much stuff done. Yeah. So what I am looking forward to is being able to turn this on on my own car.

And anytime. Like, I would do more business in LA if I didn't have to drive. Yeah. Because it just sucks. And. And I also think that driver less highway. You know, there's a study done not that long ago, MIT did it and what they found, you know what the number one cause of basically any kind of obstructions or traffic jams are actually caused.

By?

What? It's stupid drivers who don't go fast.

Enough. Oh.

Yes. It's basically people who Use their brakes too much and are too conservative. So what they found where the most aggressive drivers that are constantly changing actually speed things up considerably. So it's just stupid slugs that are in the way and cause the problem. So, you know, if we had an aggressive algorithm and more robotic taxis and more robotic drivers, it would be a significantly safer. We'd get there faster. And statistically speaking, that is the fact this AI automated driving is considerably faster. Anytime you hear about a Tesla crash or an accident, it's actually statistically like there's a hundred times, no more than that. Significantly more. I saw the numbers, but it's so ridiculously high the number of automotive accidents that humans have compared to robotic stuff. Yeah. And that's. And the algorithms are still, you know, it's just not that good.

Yet. I haven't seen if I plan to potentially roll this out on a poor mass scale. But it, it'd be interesting. You know, a lot of Waymo, specifically. No, we're just driverless in.

General.

Right. But Waymo, it's Etc. Where it'd be interesting. Right now on a lot of highways we have the HOV lane for two people and I can't drive in that unless you're two people. I would imagine the first step would be just make those HOV.

Lanes.

Yep. And then pretty soon they might make it so that the only time you can actually be driving is in the like, you know, limit the amount of manual driving. So it's. Yeah, yeah. Human behind the wheel, you're in the hov. Everyone else is.

Driverless.

Yeah. But we'll.

See.

Yeah. As I said, I'm torn. I. I kind of want no drivered cars and I kind of want to still be able to.

Drive. Yeah. I, I want both. I want the option. I still want to be able to drive my old manual transmission fast car. And you know, I think a blend is, is the best way and exactly what you're saying, which is if we have a special lane for robotic devices that basically act like a train and that way you know that these things are perfectly in and the chances of anything happening that are bad are close to zero. And I think, you know, the benefits, safety and the speed benefits because you could just basically say, hey, there is no speed limit for that.

Yeah. They can go really fast because if they're all in.

Sync. Yeah. And they're going to be monitoring their own systems, monitoring their air pressure, the chances of, you know, some sort of a hardware failure are fairly low. So I welcome our overlords to and I really enjoyed this. This was a fantastic.

Experience. Yes.

Sir.

Just two minutes away from Genius Network, and it actually knew the name of the place when we got in. That was also impressive. Really cool. Good job with the playlist. Damn. Here we are pulling around. Let's check out. We're going into Genius Network right now. Speed bump. Slowing down. Nice. Too hesitant. Totally safe. There's so many complex things to navigate here. Let's see how close to the front entrance it gets to where we want to go. I would have gone a little bit further, but it's pretty good. All right, this is us. Thank you. Make sure it's clear. Before this thing was smart enough to open up our trunk cuz we put stuff in it. Well damp. Getting your baggie. That was definitely one of the best experiences I've had. Any kind of a robotic anything. Let's see what happens. Gonna say bye.

Is it saying.

Goodbye? I don't.

Know. I am. All right.

I just want to see how long it takes before it takes off. There we.

Go.

Yeah. Look at that. It's waiting. How smart is.

That? We just took our first ride in that thing. That is such a.

Trip.

Nice.