Yomiuri Shimbun/ Reuters
- Uber started offering rides in Waymo’s self-driving cars to users in Atlanta in June.
- Some autonomous vehicle enthusiasts say hailing a ride in one of them requires dedication.
- Riders said they have repeatedly canceled rides with human drivers to get matched with a robotaxi.
When Atlanta resident Nate Galesic wanted to ride in one of Waymo‘s self-driving cars earlier this summer, it took him an hour of declining rides to get one.
The Uber app kept pairing him with human drivers, he said, even though he selected the option to indicate he preferred one of the self-driving vehicles. Eventually, Uber matched him with a Waymo, Galesic said.
In June, the ride-hailing service started offering the option to ride in autonomous vehicles in Atlanta through Uber’s partnership with Waymo. It’s the latest city where the company is experimenting with robotaxis as it looks to keep up with competing offerings from rivals like Tesla and Lyft.
These driverless vehicles seem to be amassing a contingent of enthusiasts who prefer them over human drivers. While Uber users cannot guarantee that they’ll get a ride in a Waymo in Atlanta, some are working the system to get paired with one.
To find a Waymo, Galesic said, he has turned down about 20 human Uber drivers on average. “The fact that it’s so challenging to get has turned it into a game,” he said.
How one Uber rider says he’s gotten 35 Waymo rides in Atlanta so far
Since Uber started offering rides in Waymo vehicles in late June, Galesic said he’s taken about 35 rides in the driverless cars. Each time, he’s followed a similar process of dropping rides with human Uber drivers until the app matches him with a Waymo car.
The process is more involved than getting a self-driving car through the Waymo One app, which Galesic said he’s used on trips in Phoenix and San Francisco. Waymo doesn’t operate its own app in Atlanta.
Galesic told Business Insider that he’s enthusiastic about the technology behind self-driving cars. He pointed to data from companies including Waymo, which makes programs that power autonomous vehicles, suggesting that self-driving cars are involved in fewer injury-causing accidents than those with a person behind the wheel.
As an assistant director for TV and film products, Galesic said he usually drives himself home after a long day on set. Not having to drive — or face judgment from a ride-hailing driver if he nods off along the way — is another benefit of autonomous vehicles, he said.
“I’ve always dreamt about the day when I could just pass out on the way to and from work,” he said.
Uber is growing its robotaxi fleet
Andrew Nerney, another Atlanta resident, said he has taken five trips in the self-driving cars since they became available through Uber. He said that his house is two blocks outside Uber’s service area for Waymo rides, meaning that he has to take a short walk to his pickup point for the chance to catch one of the self-driving cars.
Like Galesic, Nerney said that he had to cancel multiple rides with human drivers before getting paired with a Waymo vehicle.
The five rides that Nerney did take in Waymo vehicles had a few things in common, he told Business Insider: They all traveled four miles or less, cost no more than $12, and stuck to city streets instead of going on freeways.
While the number of Waymo vehicles serving the city is likely small, Nerney said, it seems to him that they’re gaining popularity with Atlantans. “Each day, I see Waymos with passengers more frequently,” he said.
An Uber spokesperson said that the company has dozens of vehicles operating in Atlanta and about 100 in Austin, where it launched the partnership in March. Atlanta will have a fleet of self-driving cars that will grow to “hundreds over the next few years,” the spokesperson said.
Riders can maximize their chances of being paired with a Waymo car by avoiding trips that involve freeway driving, riding outside high-demand times like nights and weekends, and making sure that their pick-up and drop-off points are within the current 65-square-mile Atlanta service area, the spokesperson said. An option in Uber’s settings menu allows users to indicate that they prefer rides in a Waymo.
A Waymo spokesperson said that the company is partnering with Uber in Atlanta instead of offering rides using its own app to reach more people more quickly.
Some riders still have reservations about riding in autonomous vehicles
Not everyone is as enthusiastic to get into a self-driving car as Galesic and Nerney are.
In the US, many riders still have reservations about the safety of self-driving cars, said Frank McCleary, a partner at consulting firm Arthur D. Little’s automotive and manufacturing practice. Deadly accidents involving self-driving vehicles are one reason that potential riders might be wary, McCleary said.
“That negative news cycle has sort of pushed some folks away from it,” he told Business Insider.
In one survey conducted by Arthur D. Little last year, US respondents said by a 17-percentage point margin that they did not — and would not — use a fully or semi-autonomous car.
However, most of the survey’s respondents who reside in cities with at least 1 million people — the kind of dense, urban environments that ride-hailing services and autonomous-car-makers have focused on so far — said that they had or would take a ride in a self-driving car.
Galesic thinks more people will become comfortable riding in self-driving cars over time, much like it took years for smartphones to become ubiquitous after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, he said.
“New tech doesn’t become massively adopted overnight,” he said. “It takes a long time.”
Do you have a story to share about ride-hailing or the gig economy? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or 808-854-4501.