Today, Explained - RoboCab

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

The San Francisco Standard’s Liz Lindqwister reports from San Francisco, where people are flipping her off for hailing rides in robotaxis. The Verge’s Andrew Hawkins explains how long before one pulls up in front of you. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Imagine you call a cab and it pulls up to the curb in front of your place and you get in and you look over the driver and there is no driver. There's just robot. Hello, I'm Johnny Cat. Where can I take you tonight? And you're like, what's going on? This feels unsafe. But then the robot's like, come with me if you want to live. And so you relent. And all of a sudden the robot makes the car go and you actually get to your destination, but then the robot gets kind of surly. Get out. What sounds like a distant sci-fi future is now a reality. RoboCabs are picking up passengers in San Francisco,

and they're coming for you next on Today Explained. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Liz Lindquister and I'm a data journalist at the San Francisco Standard. We focus on local news, politics, and culture in San Francisco.

And what's the latest in local news and politics and culture in San Francisco? Something about robo-taxis? Yeah, a lot about robo-taxis. People like to say that San Francisco is at the heart of the robo-taxi revolution. And they're practically everywhere in the city now. You can see them crawling, you know, on every single street. So this isn't like an experiment.

This is the future. This is reality. No, it's very real and it's happening. And right in my backyard, you know, you'll see them every single day when you're going to work. I've taken them out to go get drinks with friends and stuff.

And they've become about as ubiquitous as an Uber or Lyft. I'm sorry, that is like a game changer. I did not know it was so ubiquitous that people were just taking them out to go get drinks with their friends on a Friday night or whatever. What was the experience like? Yeah, I mean, it's very surreal because in a lot of ways, the experience of riding in a robo-taxi is just like an Uber. Like, it's a normal car. Whether you're in a Waymo, it'll be like a Jaguar. A Jaguar robot car? Yeah, it's very bougie.

It feels very fancy and luxurious. But you'll just be riding through town, and it just doesn't have a driver. Like, you'll see the wheel moving and spinning and the pedals going, but there won't be any driver up front. Do you tip the robot taxi? I have never tipped a robot taxi. Maybe that makes me a stingy rider, but I don't really feel the need to tip the technology. Does it ask you to tip the robot driver? No, it doesn't. You know, in the case of Waymo, it wasn't able to even charge me for rides up until literally Thursday of last week.

Basically, this robotaxi revolution really got kicked into high gear last Thursday because of this big state vote by the California Public Utilities Commission. Here we are again, San Francisco, about to have four people make a decision on whether or not the city is going to be pimped out by yet another couple of large tech companies. There were dozens of people who lined up outside of the Public Utilities Commission meeting on Thursday, and they gave like six hours of public comment to say how much they really disliked these cars or how much they loved them, on the other hand. Waymo and Cruise, they had a pretty big contingence there in support.

And, you know, Mothers Against Drunk Driving like to support Cruise because they like to plug that these robo-taxis are safer than the average driver. I am a mother of an incredible child with autism. Autonomous has given me a new hope. My son will grow up to have a greater level of independence and safety. On the flip side, there's just a whole slew of people that have seen how they've really disrupted life in San Francisco. There's been a lot of pushback from city officials,

from the fire department, and from just local activists who really don't want to see more cars on the street. But it still passed. The vote is 3-1. The motion passes. They basically granted these robotaxis the ability to expand Unlimited through all parts of the city and drive all hours of the day and charge money for it,

basically making them like taxis. You keep mentioning these two companies, Cruise and Waymo. I think it's time you tell us a bit more about them. We try to ride with Cruise. Owned by GM, Cruise is one of the largest driverless car companies in America, along with its competitor, Google's Waymo. There's actually a third

that has started to test some of its cars in the city and in California. It's called Zoox and it's backed by Amazon. Zoox? Yeah. Like zucchinis?

No, like Z-O-O-X. And their claim to fame is they're also doing robo taxis, but their cars don't have like traditional driver controls. Like they don't have a wheel or pedals. It's just like a box on wheels that drives people through town. You just get in and put your faith in Uncle Jeff. Yeah, pretty much. So these rides were free for a time. How much are they now

that they're not free? It depends on the company, because until now, Cruise was actually able to charge for its rides. That's like the confusing part about this is that different companies had different rules. But basically, Waymo hasn't released its pricing model. They say that there's going to be a base fee and that there's going to be, you know, cost per mile, cost per time. And the same thing with cruise, except cruise has been more public about their base fee of $5 and the additional costs on top of it. How is this changing the experience of calling a cab? Taxi! Taxi! Yo, man! Right here. Right here. Are people doing different things in the car now that they're alone?

In some of my reporting, we found that people are starting to do, how do you say, like debaucherous things or maybe some unseemly things in the car. Yeah, we found a handful of people who had either had sex or hooked up in the back of a robo-taxi because there's just no driver to tell you you can't do that. And I'd imagine the same goes for alcohol or drugs. But, you know, the companies obviously don't plug this as something that you should do in their vehicles. Why not? Is sex illegal in San Francisco? Definitely not in robo-taxis, according to some of our more adventurous readers. Well, had there been any problems yet with these robo cars? That's an understatement, honestly.

The fire chief has reported 55 incidents this year where self-driving taxis interfered with firefighters' duties. This includes not just unexpected stops in front of our fire stations, not allowing our vehicles to respond to incidents. It's pretty crazy. Like these cars will just get caught. You know, let's say there's 10 fire trucks coming down to stop a blaze in San Francisco. The cruise cars just don't know what to do and they'll just stop. They'll just kind of brick up on the street and not move. But the issue with that is that they'll be blocking traffic. They'll be blocking the emergency vehicles. The San Francisco Fire Department says they are not against modernization and new technologies, but any vehicle that endangers the people of the city and its visitors and would put its passengers between a fire engine and a fire is not ready for primetime.

So they crumble under pressure. They definitely crumble under pressure. And they were put to the test this Friday. San Francisco has this pretty famous music festival called Outside Lands. Yeah. Tens of thousands of people attend. It's a really big event for the city. And, you know, Cruz and Waymo were still operating around the park where the festival was held.

This was like day one of the new world that we were living in San Francisco. Mm-hmm. Day one of the new world that we were living in San Francisco. Day one of the new world and they had a meltdown. What? A bizarre futuristic scene on Friday night raising new concerns about robo-taxis in San Francisco. Basically, as many as a dozen stalled cruise cars, they blocked the streets in a neighborhood in the north part of the city. This is my Super Bowl. After Outside Lands, watching this driverless car that's been stuck in the road for God knows how long cause mayhem outside of the festival.

Oh my God. Okay, call me. The company said that it was because all of the people at Outside Lands disrupted kind of the cell phone signal or the signal that the cruise cars use to operate. These vehicles need continuous connectivity back to a central office. And what the company say is that when they lose the connectivity, the cars stop to ensure safety. The robots blame the people. Yeah, the robots blame the people. Yeah, the robots blame the people. A lot of people said that the robo-taxis

just couldn't handle the floods of people walking on the street. They'll just stop. And it's kind of funny to see because the cars kind of look clueless. And there's no driver in them either so you really can't yell at them to move or honk at them either. I think

something that people don't talk enough about too with cruise is that they're such cute little cars that it's kind of, it really truly is comical when they mess up. But of course it's like all cute and fun until someone gets hurt. And hearing that these cars just have a meltdown when there's emergency vehicles flying through a crowded street or when there's lots of people around is concerning. Yeah. What this says to me is that when cell phones fail, if there's a power outage, if there's a natural disaster like we just saw in Lahaina,

that these cars could congest our streets at the precise time when we would be needing to deploy emergency apparatus. You know, myself having driven in so many robo taxis at this point, it's most interesting to see humans' relationships to these robot cars and not necessarily the robot cars themselves. You know, when I'm inside them, I'll see people flicking me off or just like glaring or yelling at me from outside of their cars because they feel so strongly about it. They're so frustrated with these dinky little robot cars. They're also coning the cars. Coning the cars? Yeah. So it sounds funny, but it's literally traffic cones that activists are placing on top of

robo-taxi sensors so that they literally can't move. No one's in it. Marking autonomous vehicles as traffic hazards. The group Safe Street Rebels is placing cones on Cruz and Waymo cars as a way to temporarily stop them. They want these cars off the road permanently. You know, the city has even taken it into their own hands where like a firefighter in an emergency situation, they coned a Cruz car because they didn't want it to firefighter in an emergency situation, they coned a cruise car

because they didn't want to keep moving into an emergency situation. Wow. Even the firefighters are getting in on it. So it hasn't been a totally smooth transition, but that's sort of to be expected, I imagine. Yeah. And I mean, I think the big question now, too, is where this is going to fit in in the broader transportation landscape of not just San Francisco, but the state and the country. Like we have Ubers and Lyfts that still exist, but I imagine a lot of those drivers are frustrated that there are all these self-driving cars that might take their positions. Activists told the CPUC this is not only a threat to safety, but to jobs. And LA is next. If it passes here, it's also going to be going to Los Angeles.

Thousands of taxi cab workers in Los's also going to be going to Los Angeles. Thousands of taxi cab workers in Los Angeles are going to lose their job. It's going to be a real detrimental development for the people of California. And then, of course, there's transit problems with funding in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Our public transportation system is really struggling. So for another car option, private option to show up like this, you know, that gets a lot of folks really frustrated. Like, is this the right use of our time, of our priorities, of our funding? I don't know. Right. Is the answer more cars?

Yeah. And that's a lot of the criticism is that San Francisco is a dense city. It's a small city. Does it really need thousands more of these robo taxis? It sounds like what you're saying is that people ought to get used to the idea of being driven around by robots. I mean, I think the CPUC vote basically said that, right? Like whether or not San Franciscans like it, robotaxis are here to stay. And now they have unlimited access to the city and can charge money for it.

And you know, there are a lot of people excited about it. Waymo likes to say that they have a wait list of like over 100,000 people. That's a lot of people that are excited to drive their cars. Or it's just 100,000 people who are really excited about having sex in a robot car. I mean, you said it, not me. I mean, at the end of the day, it's definitely a novelty to try out one of these cars. My parents are going to come visit in a month, and that'll be the first thing I do is show them the future in a robo-taxi. Liz Lindquister, SanFranciscoStandardSFStandard.com. Even if you're not going to San Francisco, you could still experience the robo-taxi meltdown.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. Where am I? You're in a Johnny Cat. I mean, what am i doing here i'm sorry would you please rephrase the question how did i get in this taxi the door opened you got in today explain is back we're now joined by andrew hawkins transportation editor at the verge to ask if robo taxis are just a san francisco thing Not at all. San Francisco, I think the most high-profile market where the cars are operating, but Phoenix

actually preceded San Francisco by many years. And the Phoenix area has been Waymo's playing ground, its stomping ground, for the last since I think 2017, actually. Cruise actually is now testing its vehicles in the Phoenix area as well. Where else are they heading? So there's a number of markets that both companies have said that they plan on eventually

or hopefully launching their robo-taxi services. Austin, Texas is a prominent one. Cruise and Waymo are both testing their vehicles there. Waymo is testing in Los Angeles and has said that it plans on eventually launching a robo-taxi service in LA. Ready to ride without a driver in SoCal? Are you ready?

Nope. The company... I don't think I am. And they've been all over the place, honestly. They've been up in Washington State, they've been down in Miami, there have been some testing in Pittsburgh. There's even a few vehicles out mapping the streets in New York City. Wait, New York City is home to lots of people. And I hear

these cars get confused when they're surrounded by people and their cell phones. Yeah, that's that is the case. So it'll be interesting to see how your average New Yorker takes it when the robots start to come up. Hey! I'm walking here! I'm walking here! But yeah, as of now, I think Waymo's got a couple cars that are just mapping the streets of New York, so they're manually driven, not autonomous. But, you know, when you start to map, that's a pretty strong indication that eventually you plan on having some sort of commercial service in the future. It sounds like this is being scaled up kind of quickly. How quickly is this being scaled up? It's been a while coming, and I think the predictions have kind of outpaced the technology.

So we've been told, I think, for a number of years that self-driving cars are coming. They're going to take over our roads. We're not going to have any human-powered vehicles at all in the future. And I think a lot of those predictions really kind of have not panned out exactly. And we're starting to see how complicated it is to try to roll out this technology, especially in a very dense urban environment like San Francisco. To say nothing of New York. I can imagine from the ground, if you're on the streets in San Francisco and all of a sudden you wake up and there's hundreds of these self-driving cars that are out there, it probably seems pretty quick to those people. I think when people hear that they're self-driving robot cars in San Francisco, they probably go like, oh yeah, it makes sense. You know, San Francisco, that's where this stuff

happens. But how much pushback are these cars encountering in cities like, you know, Austin, Los Angeles, you mentioned Washington State, New York City. Yeah, it's kind of been a mixed bag, I would say. I think in California, there's a pretty strong regulatory system in place in terms of autonomous vehicles when they are testing and when they want to apply for commercial service. That doesn't exist in most other states. In fact, in Arizona, the state has pretty much given the companies free reign to test and to launch commercial operations when and where they want to. There's very little oversight. So that's sort of the difference, I think, between California and some of these other states where these companies are wanting to launch

much looser regulatory frameworks. And there's a power vacuum at the federal level. Self-driving cars are already being tested in at least 25 states. But with no federal regulations, America doesn't have a national roadmap for safety guidelines. It's really left to the states to kind of create their own rulebook for this technology. And you're seeing that there's like a lot of diversity there. And we know the data says that some of these self-driving cars, maybe all of these self-driving cars are safer than human operated vehicles. But when you hear these stories about these cars freezing up in emergency situations, you can't help but feel like they could also drive you off of a cliff. Is there anyone in any of these states saying maybe we should slow this down and wait for this technology to improve?

Well, I don't mean to call into question your authority on this, Sean, but I would like to push back slightly on what you just said, because the data actually hasn't proven that the vehicles are safer than human driven ones. Oh, good. It's easy to sort of make that assumption because the marketing makes sense. You know, when the companies come out and say, the Waymo driver never gets drowsy. It doesn't get distracted. It is something that is attentive all the time. That makes sense to people, you know, because humans are very prone to doing all those things. But the way that we measure safety when it comes to vehicle operation and driving, it's usually in the hundreds of millions of miles. And these vehicles have not driven that much. They've driven millions of miles, but they are nowhere close to approaching

hundreds of millions of miles, which is the sort of the metric that we use to measure the safety of human driving. Would you say the cars perform as well or better than a human driver? I would say that I really trust this technology and that when you're in the car, you feel entirely safe and it's a great user experience. So you're saying we should remain highly skeptical of these robo cars and this technology? I think when it comes to safety, 100%. I think you can make a lot of assumptions and it sounds good on the surface. And I think the initial data that they've released actually backs them up to a certain extent. But like I said, there still is a long way to go before we can actually state unequivocally that

these cars are safer than human driven ones. But in the meantime, it seems like people are really excited about them. Some people are. Here's the real pièce de résistance. Traveless cars, baby. The year is 2023. And it shouldn't be discounted. A lot of people in the disabled community are very excited because for their entire lives, they've been very limited in the types of mobility options that they have. If you have visual impairment, you can't drive yourself. You have to rely on maybe Uber and Lyft. That's not a very reliable thing for them most of the time. Taking public transportation can be really tough. In California, when they were having this vote about whether to expand the services, so many folks from the disability community came and testified and said that this is something that they want in their lives. animal. She is a guide dog. Her service she performs, she guides me. I am totally blind. In the last month, I have had three Uber drivers very explicitly deny pumpkin access to their vehicles simply because she is a service animal. This is not something that an autonomous vehicle is going to do. It would be just a huge advantage to them to have this type of mode of transportation. So I don't think that that can be easily dismissed.

I know for people like you, this has been a long time coming. But I mean, I live in a somewhat major American city, and it's still amazing to me to think that if I were in San Francisco, I could walk out to the street and potentially get hit by a robot car. Like, that's a trip to me. Do you think this is just a moment of adjustment before we dive into the future? Are we kind of here? Is this the moment?

Yeah, I mean, so I talked to a lot of experts in this and what they tell me sort of time and time again, that this is really kind of the very beginning of a potential revolution in transportation, but it's not going to happen overnight. But it will happen with incremental evolutionary over a long period of time. And I think that that's why you have to be skeptical of those predictions about safety and like this is going to sort of take over all driving altogether. And the folks that I talked to, they compare it to like other big changes that happen in history. So like when we first started installing things like indoor plumbing or a nationwide electrical grid with lines throughout homes and buildings or bringing natural gas to people's kitchens or building roads and highways for transportation, you know,

all of those were like major societal changes, and they caused huge inconveniences and discomfort for a lot of people. But we can't live without them today. Can the same be said for autonomous vehicles? Well, I think it's way too early to tell. But I do think that there is a lot of potential for both inconveniences and also sort of revolutionary mobility for a lot of people. Andrew Hawkins, you can read him at theverge.com. Our program today was produced by Abishai Artsy. We were edited by Amina Alsadi,

fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by David Herman. I'm Sean Ramos from the rest of the Today Explained team includes co-host Noelle King, executive producer Miranda Kennedy, managing editor Matthew Collette, Halima Shah, Siona Petros, Miles Bryan, Hadi Mawagdi, Amanda Llewellyn, John Ahrens, Victoria Chamberlain, extra help from Patrick Boyd, music from Breakmaster Cylinder, On the radio, thanks to WNYC. A show that exists thanks to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's okay.

Right here. Thank you for taking Johnny Cab. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed the ride.