Tesla's Robotaxi Launch Shows Google's Waymo Is Worth More Than $45 Billion
Tesla's TSLA -3.79%decrease; red down pointing triangle long-awaited robotaxi service has finally hit the road. But rather than help justify the electric-car maker's sky-high valuation, it really highlights how underappreciated Google-parent Alphabet GOOGL 2.34%increase; green up pointing triangle might be for its own, much more advanced self-driving venture.
The robotaxi service Tesla launched in Austin, Texas, last weekend involves fewer than two dozen cars offering rides to handpicked adults in a small area of the city between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight. The vehicles are Tesla's Model Y SUVs outfitted with the most robust version of the company's full-self-driving software. The purpose-built Cybercab that Tesla unveiled last year isn't expected to roll off production lines until at least sometime in 2026.
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Time Magazine
22 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
Waymo's Self-Driving Future Is Here
Buy a copy of the TIME100 Companies issue here Mawakana believes that Waymo is threading the needle on all fronts, and that the company's gradual, safety-first, city-by-city approach (Phoenix in 2020, San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2024, Austin and Atlanta this year, and Washington D.C. in 2026) is exactly why it will emerge victorious in the automated rideshare race. Cruise shut down in 2024 after its headline-making accident; Tesla faces multiple lawsuits related to its autopilot technology. 'Trust is hard to build and easy to lose,' Mawakana says. 'Not just Tesla, but there have been other companies that have come and gone that have had very, very audacious claims. We've learned the amount of humility needed: Ultimately, it's the riders who are going to decide.' __________________________________________ While Waymo is the first company to deploy a self-driving fleet, they're far from the only company to try. In the early 2010s, Uber spent hundreds of millions of dollars on autonomous vehicles, which executives believed were essential to profitability. Raffi Krikorian, former director of Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, who led those efforts from 2015 to 2017, said that the mechanical aspect of teaching cars to drive was one challenge, but unspoken social norms were another entirely. 'When you follow all the rules of the road to the letter, you're actually a dangerous driver,' Krikorian says. 'You actually need to know when to speed, when to roll through a yellow. When we first deployed, we would slam on the brakes at red lights.' Around the same time, Google was ramping up its own self-driving project, operating buggy-like Firefly prototypes with plastic windshields around the company's Bay Area-campuses. Being within Google's massive corporate umbrella gave engineers the time and resources to experiment without rushing to market. In 2016, Google spun this project, called Waymo, into its own company within Alphabet. Dmitri Dolgov, an engineer who worked on the Firefly and is now Waymo's co-CEO, says those days were characterized both by technological breakthroughs and painstaking cautiousness. 'We would build something with goals for what the Waymo driver would be capable of, and then run it through our rigorous safety framework—and see that it fell short of where we set the bar,' he says. 'And we would not deploy.' Mawakana joined the company in 2017, initially as vice president of public policy and government affairs, ultimately moving into running business operations. Waymo's road safety mission was personal to her: Her uncle, a longhaul trucker, had died in his vehicle from a heart attack. She relates to customers' stories of family members killed by drunk driving or other accidents. 'People don't think they need a safer alternative. But the status quo is not acceptable,' Mawakana says. After several years of testing and iterating, Waymo first began offering fully autonomous rides to the public in October 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. (The city has attracted several driverless companies due to its wide lanes, separated pedestrian walkways, and mostly snow-less weather.) At first, many community members reacted with skepticism or outright anger. Reports of strange but harmless incidents piled up, including Waymos stopping unexpectedly in the middle of the road. But gradually, Waymo's technology improved, and the community grew accustomed to their presence on the streets. Converts included Mayor Kate Gallego, who tells TIME that the city has seen lower tailpipe emissions and more drivers following the speed limits since Waymo arrived. Wamyo's staff has now grown to 2,500 employees, and its fleet to over 1,500 cars. In San Francisco, Waymo cars have become tourist attractions, with visitors taking the cars up the iconic winding Lombard Street. The prices of individual rides are variable, but often competitive with that of Uber or Lyft. While social media users have laughed at cringeworthy moments—like a flock honking at each other in a parking lot—those incidents were ultimately just that: laughable, but not dangerous. __________________________________________ Driverless cars sound terrifying at first blush. But there are several reasons why they make theoretically safer drivers than humans. While humans have blind spots and fallible attention, Waymos ingest visual and spatial information through a slew of cameras and sensors. Radar allows the vehicle to see clearly through fog or snow. LIDAR, 360-degree laser-based spatial sensors, detect other cars in the dead of night and outside of the reach of a car's headlights. Whenever Waymo enters a city, it begins a detailed custom mapping process, ingesting data like lane markers and curb heights. Each car on the road then provides real-time updates about new construction zones or road closures. All of this information is held on a powerful computer in the car's trunk—the contents of which are uploaded and used to improve the Waymo driver. In January, I took Waymos around Austin, closely watching a screen on each console that showed real-time digital representations of buildings, trees, pedestrians and even dogs passing by. One afternoon, I tested a car's reflexes jumping out in front of it on an empty street (do not try this at home, kids); It immediately ground to a halt. While in the car, I tested the 'assistance' button, which refers passengers to a support team—and someone picked up immediately. Once the novelty wore off, riding around in Waymos felt shockingly uninteresting. The cars drove cautiously but competently; though their tendency to drive just above the speed limit sometimes created long lines behind them. Still, the cars occasionally showed welcome spurts of defensive driving. One Waymo, while navigating a one-lane cramped downtown street, sped up in order to seize a gap in parked cars before an oncoming car could beat it to the spot. Another, when needing to take a left-hand turn, cranked the wheel hard and flew through the intersection before a rush of cars arrived; I would have waited for the next light. Even some professional drivers grudgingly admit that Waymo cars drive pretty well. 'I love the way they drive: I think they drive better than me,' says Sergio Avedian, a Los Angeles-based Uber driver and a senior contributor for the blog The Rideshare Guy. 'People have seen it evolve and now overwhelmingly love it,' says Ryan Johnson, a Tempe-based real estate developer. 'Other drivers even think that Waymo makes other drivers drive safer.' While Waymo earns money every ride, perhaps even more valuable is the data it ingests—about handling merging, entering crowded parking lots, or avoiding road closures—all of which train the system to make it more robust. (A spokesperson said that the data is not shared with Google Maps.) 'We're driving two million miles a week, which is more than most humans will drive in their lifetime,' says Matthew Schwall, Waymo's director of safety and incident management. Whenever unusual or dangerous situations occur, his team studies them closely, running simulations and tweaking variables so all Waymo cars can better navigate future crises. Waymos also avoid many of humanity's worst traits when it comes to driving. We tire; we check our phones; we fly into road rage; we drive drunk. These flaws contribute to 40,000 U.S. roadway deaths every year—a number that most of society has come to ignore or sweep aside. 'There have been many situations where I have been intentionally harassed or carelessly mistreated by human drivers with emotions and entitlements,' says Andre Rouhani, a PhD student in Tempe, who often rides to class on his bicycle. He says he feels much safer with more Waymos on the road.
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