100.000 trips per week. No driver. No steering wheel that turns by itself. Just passengers moving around the city as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Welcome to the era of Waymo robotaxis, where the future is already here. Or maybe we should say: welcome to the present, where the future got tired of waiting and decided to take a ride in a taxi, while some uninformed idiot still giggles on the topic.
Dizzying (or car sick) numbers
Waymo, the Alphabet creature that seems to have come out of an Isaac Asimov novel, has just announced that it has reached an incredible weekly racing milestone. Yes, you read that right. While you were busy arguing with the taxi driver about the fastest route, 100.000 people were happily taking a computer on wheels for a ride.
Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo (and probably the person with the coolest job on the planet), dropped this bomb on social media. And to think that just a few months ago, Sundar Pichai, the Google boss, boasted of 50.000 trips a week.
A fleet that makes “Transformers” look like a documentary
Small note of color on the Waymo Robotaxis: the fleet is all modified Jaguar I-Paces. Have you seen them? I'll put the photo under this box. Yes, those electric cars that look like they came out of “Blade Runner”. I don't know exactly how many there are, but in California alone they have 778.
Imagine 778 Jaguars driving around without drivers. It's as if the rich suddenly decided to share their luxury cars with the rest of us, only they forgot to get on it.
Waymo robotaxi: expansion or invasion?
We've seen them all. The first enthusiasm (definitely sparkling). The first shots are empty, inevitable when introducing a transformative technology (get it, iene ridens?). Now Waymo isn't content with conquering just one city.
These guys are taking Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix by storm. In San Francisco the service is 24/7. Basically, you can get drunk at any time and always have a sober robotaxi take you home. This, forgive me, I call progress.
The price of the future (spoiler: it's high)
I know that none of you think that all this is free. And in fact it costs quite a bit: I'm not referring to the price of the journeys (at the moment less than 1 euro per kilometre, among other things it is established in advance and does not change even in the event of variations on the route). I'm talking about investments.
Alphabet, for example, has already invested 30 billion dollars in its 'creation', and is now about to invest another 5 billion. Five billion. With that money we could send Jeff Bezos to Mars and leave him there. But no, we spend it to have taxis without taxi drivers. Priorities, I suppose. Or is it the fact that We won't see people on Mars for a while.
Waymo robotaxi: the future is here, and it wants a ride
I'll say it again: as we write this, 100.000 people a week are getting into a driverless car like it's the most normal thing in the world. And perhaps it has become one. Maybe the future isn't made of flying cars e teleportation, but of cars that drive themselves and take you shopping.
Welcome to the future. It's a little less spectacular than we expected, but hey, at least we will no longer have to look for parking.
