AUTOMOTIVE OUTLOOK

By Lawrence Makagon

Waymo and Cruise - Backseat Driving

Bloomberg recently let a couple of its correspondents loose - well sort of - in a couple of what we might call Robotaxis, through the streets of San Francisco. What many of us doubtless thought might never happen has happened, and is happening. In fact, access to actual robotaxi services is becoming a reality for thousands. The stars of the show were Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and General Motors Co.backed Cruise.

At this time, the services work like an Uber or a Lyft, where you use an app, confirm your pick-up location, plug in your destination, and wait for your ride. When the car arrives, tap in the Waymo One app to unlock the doors. In you get, fasten your seat belt and by either touching a screen or using the app to start the ride, and away you go.

San Francisco is the only city in the world where two companies are running round-the-clock driverless services for the public. Both are limited in who can ride where, and Waymo can’t yet charge for rides.

There are other efforts in Arizona, Texas, and China, with more limited hours. Those of you who have been driven in China may well question the pleasure involved in such a ride. There are, of course, issues, questions about an increase in safety incidents, and opposition to expansion of the area and hours that paid robotaxis can travel.

The Waymo correspondent found the car pretty conservative, tending to drive below the speed limit. Random signaling, and strangely timed lanechange attempts, were observed. A jerky ride at times, and hesitant with pedestrians. Overall a smooth, continued comfortable ride. There were the usual, expected reactions from other users of the roads.

Waymo currently has some 200 cars in San Francisco. It does around 10,000 weekly trips across the city and the Phoenix area. Its goal is ten times that volume by next summer. It has a waitlist of some 80,000. Cruise is averaging 1,000 trips a day in San Francisco, and on busy days, 2,000 trips. The company has 300 customized Chevy Bolt electric vehicles across San Francisco, Austin, and Phoenix, with tens of thousands of people signed up to ride Cruise here and tens of thousands more on the waitlist. The company’s goal is to hit $1bn in robotaxi revenue by 2025.

So how much might this cost? The Waymo One app already gives riders in the city a sense of this. A trip from Pacific Heights to Ocean Beach and on to Twin Peaks (covering 10.5 miles, lasting 53 minutes) would have run about $30.

Autonomous driving seems to be surpassing the science project phase. Companies are building actual businesses, as the correspondent’s Friday-night jaunt strongly suggests. The lady sitting in the back seat of the Cruise had a moving van to contend with, plus kids crossing the street. The question is who’s going to hoot and curse at whom in the event of an enroute altercation. Or will they build that into the software too?

Some miles east of San Francisco, Lordstown Motors recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, putting itself up for sale. The filing came two months after it posted a going concern notice as a result of a deal falling through with Taiwanese tech company Foxconn. Now, Lordstown is suing it for fraud and breach of contract.

And after ups and downs and ins and outs, Bloomberg reports that Rivian, the EV manufacturer that staged one of the biggest initial public offerings ever back in November 2021, is finally showing some of the potential that it said it had back then. Having been through a start-up mill, the company’s CEO, R J Scaringe, admitted they were lacking in operational experience during the first year but now feel much more confident. They recently came off a very good quarter when they shipped hundreds of vehicles to Europe for Amazon, their biggest shareholder. Their stock price jumped 48%. It may be that Rivian will continue to struggle. Time, production volume, and demand will tell.

The Outlook: Autonomous taxis seem like a can-do approach to local travel sanity instead of driving yourself. If it can be done in China, it might be possible in New York City. However, Los Angeles may be more difficult because Point A and Point B can be many miles apart. They won’t work everywhere, but they will work in many congested cities. Will the Uber sidegig survive? n