We let Google's autonomous car drive us around San Francisco.
How good is a self-driving car? Our author got a taste of Google's futuristic high-tech project in California.
The author and the robot car.
Photo: Thomas Brenner
beware! When you visit GoogleThere is a great danger of being dazzled by free slides and canteens. But if you look around, you will find that offices are not special and unusual, but ordinary workplaces – with very high demands on top of all that.
I was skeptical when I arrived in California. After Google smartphone event I took a look at one of the tech company's most futuristic projects: Waymo's autonomous cars.
Waymo – Into the Robotic Taxi
Let’s start with the self-driving taxi. You can order one – as you know from services like Uber – via an app. You say where you want to go and you can see how long you have to wait for the car you ordered to arrive.
There are already so many robotaxi on the road in San Francisco that there is no crowd when the white car with many sensors comes around the corner after the promised waiting time. Only a handful of European journalists are slightly annoyed.
After that, everything is as quiet and comfortable as you could hope for in a taxi ride. You get in, buckle up, and press the start button on the touchscreen. The car starts up and the steering wheel turns as if by magic.
The driver's seat must remain empty.
The only thing you have to make sure of is that you're not sitting in the driver's seat. It has to be free. So only four people fit in a five-seater. It's pretty tight, especially in the back row. But it doesn't take much imagination to see that it's only a matter of time before cars like this go without steering wheels and the interior space is used more efficiently.
On the road, it's amazing to see how the car weaves through city traffic. If you're blindfolded, it's unlikely anyone would notice that there's no one behind the wheel. The car brakes early when a pedestrian approaches and gives way to another car.
As a passenger you quickly feel at home. And not just because of the soothing uplifting music, which you can also customize in the app. Even I was surprised to find that I In Waymo I prefer to sit in the back. It feels less relaxing in the passenger seat. Maybe because the temptation is greater to offer good, well-meaning advice, as with a human driver. There’s nothing you can do in the back anyway. You might as well just sit back and relax.
Tied Up? Waymo Is Already Taking Off
The only surprising thing about the ride was that the car took off before the Austrian colleague had even buckled up. After the ride, a Waymo manager explained to us that this was perfectly normal. There’s a short window of tolerance. Just like a human taxi driver sometimes drives when he sees that passengers are buckled up.
Overall, it’s amazing how quickly you get used to being in a Waymo taxi. On the ride back to the airport, it feels a little weird to have a real person sitting in the cab with us and occasionally steering the wheel.
conclusion: Waymo has a lot of potential. But this wouldn’t be the first time a tech company has correctly predicted the future, only to stumble when it comes to bringing the technology to people.
Google can tell us a thing or two about this with Google Glass, which failed nearly ten years ago. The first impression there was also promising, but then all sorts of flaws and problems appeared in everyday life.
By the way, Google hasn't completely given up on the idea. On the sidelines of the new smartphone presentation, Google's hardware chief promised that they're working hard on the glasses behind the scenes.
What will soon find its way into our daily lives? Robot taxis or computer glasses?
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