Speaker 1: Waymo is the autonomous vehicle development wing of Google parent company alphabet, Inc. Now it started life as Google's self-driving division before being spun off in 2016, presumably because the much better name Google drive had already been taken today, Waymo is testing and developing autonomous cars in six states with hundreds of vehicles ranging from human operated data collection vehicles on the east coast to autonomous heavy trucks in Arizona and Texas. And they're also the autonomous taxis in [00:00:30] Arizona and California that you may see if you live in the Phoenix or San Francisco areas. Now in 2020, Waymo opened it's Waymo, one taxi service to the public in Phoenix and last expanded the autonomous ride share to San Francisco, which brings us to today.
Speaker 1: Today we're here at Waymo, San Francisco Depot to take a look at and get a spin in one of their autonomous taxis behind me, based on the Jaguar Ipace EV [00:01:00] now this is the Depot where all of the vehicles in the San Francisco bay area are serviced and deployed from here is also where they load up the autonomous specialist to ride in the front seat as a safety driver. At the beginning of every day, the process is actually simple. You go online and you sign up as a trusted tester, and then you download the Waymo app. And once you're approved, you use app like you would any other ride sharing app from Uber or Lyft. You just pull it out, tell it where you want to go. That car comes up, picks you up. Let's give it a try. [00:01:30] Now, Waymo one taxis in San Francisco operate with a human in the driver's seat.
Speaker 1: Waymo's autonomous specialist, but they're only there to monitor the trip as a legal requirement. And in the rare case of an emergency, all of the accelerating due earring stopping and decision making is handled by the vehicle's AI, uh, from where I'm sitting, this looks a lot like a regular Jaguar. I pace that I would be driving, uh, for review purposes, just, um, pretty basic looking, uh, very sci-fi looking as the, I pace already kind [00:02:00] of looks, uh, but with the extra addition of a screw green back here for the passenger compartment, uh, that's not necessarily there on the previous side pace. So we've got what looks like some type C port. So if I wanted to charge my phone, I can do that, but we've also got a lot of information about what's happening with the ride. So this screen is where I would initiate the trip.
Speaker 1: Once I get into the vehicle, I would just tap the start trip button and the vehicle would begin to drive autonomously with our autonomous specialists in the front, making sure that everything goes safely, uh, here is also where I've [00:02:30] got some information about, uh, sort of a 3d 360 view of the world. Uh, so I can see other cars going by. I can see things like buildings on this map. I can see what lane we're in and where the next turns gonna be. So that gives me a little bit of peace of mind, uh, that I'm going to the right place and that the car knows what's happening in the world around it. There's a button here for pullover. Um, so if I do maybe get a little car sick, uh, and I just need to pull the car over and get out for whatever reason, there's a button for that.
Speaker 1: And, uh, a call support button heaven forbid, uh, you need [00:03:00] to use that, but it's there, but for the most part, you just hail the vehicle you get in the vehicle, you hit start ride, and then you just sit back here and end up where you're going and approximately three minutes. So that was just an interesting exchange there. Uh, that that just happened. Um, we came to a four way stop, um, vehicle on the right had right of way. But two cyclists went through the turn and the way that cyclists in San Francisco often do where they kind of sometimes are acting like pedestrian and then sometime [00:03:30] acting like cyclists. And, uh, you know, the car kind of had that moment where they kind of wanted to go, but the cyclists were in front of it, him and, you know, whatever. But the, the vehicle waited and waited and waited and took its proper turn in the, getting through the intersection and did not get confused by that. And I think that some human beings, I know would've been confused by that situation kind of jockeying for their opportunity to go. So there you have it, a very smooth uneventful [00:04:00] ride. And what behind the scenes is a very, very high tech technology. Make sure you stay lot tier to the road, show.com, where we give you more riding impressions than autonomous vehicles and every now and then we drive cars too.
