The Journal. - The Future of Self-Driving Cars Is Here

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

San Francisco has been the testing ground for self-driving car companies Cruise and Waymo. Now the companies want to expand statewide and to other cities across the U.S. But as WSJ’s Meghan Bobrowsky reports, the companies have faced opposition from some residents in their bid to compete with Lyft and Uber. Further Reading:  - America’s Most Tech-Forward City Has Doubts About Self-Driving Cars  - Cruise, Waymo Get Approval to Expand Driverless Vehicles in San Francisco  Further Listening:  - The Promise and Peril of One Self-Driving Truck Company  - Kia and Hyundai’s ‘Kia Boyz’ Problem  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've been in San Francisco recently, you might have noticed something different about some of the cars on the roads. What is up, guys? That car behind me is about to drive itself 100%. They were like, hey, these cars don't have drivers, so just get in it. All right, here it is.

Our first driverless cruise ride. Will we live? Will we die? It's waiting on this car here. Now it's clear. And it's going. Oh, my gosh. Suddenly, cars without human drivers seem to be everywhere in San Francisco,

taking riders all over the city. And the two companies behind these driverless taxis have been making big moves in California and beyond. So we're starting to see these companies really announce plans to test in more and more cities and more and more states all across the country. But at the same time, opponents of self-driving cars would argue that, you know, maybe we're not quite at the point where we should be rolling these out to the masses yet. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, August 28th. Coming up on the show,

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You're saying hello and there's nobody in the car. Oh, it says good evening, Miles. A few weeks ago, our colleagues Megan Bobrowski and Miles Krupa wanted to try out a self-driving car for themselves. So they took a Waymo, a self-driving taxi, to a bar in San Francisco. So we close the door. It shows our destination on a little console in the center. And then you can press, well, let's buckle up first. I like the music in here. It's very spacey. Okay. And then start ride. Hello from Waymo. As we get going, just give us one minute to cover

a few riding tips. The Waymo they rode in had no driver in the front, just a steering wheel that moved all on its own. We'll do all the driving, so please don't touch the steering wheel or pedals during your ride. I asked Megan

what it was like. As you can imagine, getting into a car where there is no one driving, it can be a little bit intimidating. And I was certainly, you know, I think understandably a little bit hesitant to see how the ride would go. But after five to 10 minutes, some of the fears and hesitations sort of subsided for me. And the ride itself, was it smooth? Was it bumpy? Did it feel any different from a regular car with a driver in it? Yeah, so it's almost like if your grandma was driving or someone who follows the rules of the road very closely. So it took a little bit longer to get to our destination than it probably would have if I was driving or if, you know,

someone who is a human was driving just because I think, you know, people tend to drive slightly, you know, the speed limit or a little bit faster. And these cars definitely drive the speed limit and, if anything, a little bit slower than the speed limit. Did you find that reassuring? Because my grandma has been known to get into parking lot fender benders, so I don't know if I'm reassured by this comparison. Okay, well, if your grandma drives slowly or incautiously, then it would maybe feel similar to that.

In the U.S., the push to develop self-driving cars began with the Department of Defense. They wanted the technology for the military. In 2004, the government promised a million-dollar cash prize to anyone who could build a vehicle that could drive itself across the Nevada desert. But no one could make a self-driving vehicle that could drive itself across the Nevada desert. But no one could make a self-driving vehicle that actually worked. Fast forward to today, engineers from that competition are some of the founders of the self-driving car movement. In San Francisco, there are two companies. There's Waymo, which is part of Alphabet, the company that owns Google.

And the Waymo driver, our autonomous driving technology, is paving the way for a better future of mobility. The other company is Cruise, which is majority owned by General Motors, the maker of Chevrolet and Cadillac. At Cruise, we're building the world's most advanced, self-driving, all-electric vehicles. As far as the cars themselves, they look kind of funny. The cars that you see driving around in San Francisco, they have all these cameras and sensors. And they're very noticeable that they're not normal cars. And they're like computers that are running algorithms and programs and, you know, simultaneously scanning their surroundings and matching that to what they have mapped. So it's like an AI that's in the car, basically.

Yes. These cars are basically electric vehicles that have been retrofitted. Waymo uses Jaguar SUVs, and Cruise uses compact cars from Chevrolet. Can they be remote-controlled? They can't be, like, remotely driven. Okay. Like, if I work for one of the companies and I'm back in the office, I can't, like, remotely drive it away. If the cars get stuck or something happens, someone has to come out and get the car.

And then, where do these cars go at night? You know, when their shift is over, like we're picturing these like garages, they clock themselves out, like what is going on? So I actually happened upon one of these garages. They're called depots where they store some of the cars. And there's a couple for each of the companies in San Francisco. And people don't really know where they are. It's a bit mysterious. Waymo and Cruise have been trying out their vehicles in San Francisco, and people don't really know where they are. It's a bit mysterious. Waymo and Cruise have been trying out their vehicles in San Francisco, in part because it's a hard city to drive in. There are steep hills goal is to reduce traffic fatalities. There are a lot of people who die every year in car crashes,

both pedestrians and other people in cars. And their goal with self-driving cars is to eliminate and reduce these sorts of traffic fatalities. Unfortunately, in the U.S., 40,000 people die each year from car accidents and over a million are injured. That's Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt at a company presentation. And here's Waymo co-CEO Takidra Mawakana at a tech conference, talking about some of the dangers that human drivers cause. And that's not even getting into if we're drunk, if we're tired, if we're distracted, and if we're angry, all things the Waymo driver never is.

Their argument is that these cars are safer. They drive slower for the most part. They drive more cautiously. They follow the rules of the road. And, you know, there's no way for a self-driving car to drunk drive, to be on their phone while they're driving, to do these things that humans do while operating a vehicle, and they shouldn't, and they do. And, you know, sometimes that leads to unfortunate events. This is what the companies argue, is that this is a way of rectifying that really sad situation that we have in the U.S. And have San Francisco residents bought in?

I was at a gathering at a friend's house a couple weeks ago on a Friday night, and I saw someone open the Cruise app and call a cruise home for the night. So certainly there are people who are using this and who like this to use it to get around, but at the same time, there have been many people who are against them and who have spoken out about them. Why some people are opposed to self-driving cars is after the break. Need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Right now, get a small, organic Fairtrade coffee and a tasty bacon and egger breakfast sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. Crisp, clean finish. Perfect for sunny days and warm nights. Enjoy it well-chilled or over ice. That's refreshing. That's Summer's Beat.

Must be legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly. Carlsberg Canada Inc. Waterloo, Ontario. While self-driving car companies say they want to make roads safer, so far, their driving record has some locals concerned. Like when the cars just stop in the middle of the road and back up traffic. Video posted to social media here shows several self-driving cruise cars stopped in North Beach. What's your plan, car?

There was also the time when a San Francisco fire truck collided with a cruise car. We have this footage that shows the cruise car that collided with a San Francisco fire department truck responding to a call nearby. A crash with a fire truck and with a passenger inside. Cruise said its car entered the intersection on a green light before getting struck by the emergency vehicle. San Francisco police said the passenger went to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. Waymo also made headlines when one of its cars killed a dog.

The DMV report a Waymo car hit a small dog on May 21st in broad daylight. Waymo said the incident was, quote, unavoidable. Waymo said the incident was, quote, unavoidable. They are trained on how to follow the rules of the road. But when something changes or there's something that they're not familiar with or something that hasn't been programmed into them, sometimes they don't know what to do. They are programmed to just stop.

Either turn around or just stop. And that's created a lot of havoc in San Francisco. It's led to blocked intersections where the car is just in the middle of the road and stopped and it doesn't know what to do and people are trying to just drive around it. Some of these incidents have caused major backlash in San Francisco.

One group called Safe Street Rebel, is so against these cars that they're literally trying to stop them in their tracks. It's an activist group that is sort of just against cars in general and wants people to use public transit and biking and alternative ways to get around. And they embarked on this campaign to put cones, like traffic cones, on the hoods of self-driving cars. And when you do this, the self-driving cars get confused and they stop. They think they're about to hit something. So, like, because of the sensors just are like, oh, no, wall. Because you're blocking their sensor or you're making it so they think they're about to hit something.

And so, like we previously talked about, when they encounter danger or they encounter something where they don't know what to do, they just stop. And so this has been, you know, kind of maybe like a low-tech way to sort of disable these really high-tech cars is this group has been going around taking traffic cones from around the city and just plopping them on top of these cars. And then the companies have to come out and get them and, you know, take the cones off and reset them. Cruz and Waymo have condemned these activists. The Cruz CEO said it's not the time to play what he called silly games, while Waymo's co-CEO called the cones an act of vandalism. Safe Street Rebel said the cars are a threat to other ways of getting around the city, like walking, biking, and public transit. The tension between self-driving car companies and their opponents

came to a head earlier this month at a meeting of the California Public Utilities Commission. That's the state agency that regulates taxis. So this is also the agency that dealt with Uber and Lyft when they were getting licenses to be able to offer rides for a fee to people in San Francisco. Up to that point, crews had been offering paid rides at night in San Francisco. Waymo didn't have the state's permission to charge passengers,

but people could ride its cars for free. At the meeting, Cruz and Waymo were asking to be allowed to charge for rides at any time of day. Cruz also wanted permission to expand its fleet in the city. Many opponents were there to voice their concerns. Based on all the incidents reported so far, especially from the San Francisco Fire Department, it's very clear that Wayman Cruz technology is premature. We have seen and heard countless events

where an AV has threatened the safety of a person walking or biking. Injuries causing traffic jams, interfering with first responders and their vehicles. If you expand this unsafe technology, those problems will grow exponentially. There were also people at that same meeting who were in favor of self-driving cars. No matter what time of day, how it was feeling at work, if it received some bad news, self-driving cars always create a safe environment. As a woman who frequently needs to take rideshare or public transportation on a regular basis, and especially during evening hours, I feel much safer knowing

that I'm riding in a judgment-free, discrimination-free, fear-free vehicle rather than one that you nervously navigate. And what was at stake for the companies at this meeting? So there was a vote to whether to basically allow these companies to go forward. And that vote had already been delayed twice. And so there was sort of already hesitation about whether to go through with this. And Waymo had said, you know, if we don't get the right to charge passengers for rides in San Francisco, we're going to have to leave San Francisco because at the end of the day, this is a business and we have to pay our investors back

and we need to make money. And we're not, you know, just making self-driving cars for the fun of it. The board ultimately voted in favor of Waymo and Cruise. Essentially, they got permission to operate as full-on taxi services. But the ruling hasn't stopped the controversy around the cars. The city of San Francisco has since submitted a motion to the state to try to pause the expansion. Still, this decision could lay the groundwork for self-driving cars to pop up across the country. So this vote was very pivotal in that what California does, the rest of

the nation tends to follow. So the fact that California gave permission to these companies to ramp up operations and to start charging provides all the time, I think we might see other states follow this. Hmm. Like which states? Yeah, so it feels like since I started reporting on this, it feels like every week there's a new city that they're testing in. So since I started reporting on this, Cruises started testing in Nashville and Miami. They just announced Charlotte. Waymo is also testing in Los Angeles.

Texas is another, Dallas, Houston. Waymo and Cruise have also been operating in Phoenix. So for people who think, you know, maybe this is a California issue, it's really not. This is going to be, whether you like them or not, they're going to be in your town. They're going to be everywhere soon. So, you know, if you think they're a problem, they're going to be your problem soon. If you like them, great, they're going to be your cool new thing soon. So I think, I don't know that people really realize it yet, but this is not some science fiction thing that's happening in San Francisco.

Maybe it started that way, but it's really going to be, I think, in the next few years, expanding. I mean, if everything goes their way, expanding nationwide. That's all for today, Monday, August 28th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Myles Krupa and Lindsay Chu. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.