If that’s the sort of thing you’re into.
Uber will shift into a new gear in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday when its ride-hailing service will begin dispatching self-driving cars to pick up passengers.
The autonomous option is being provided through a partnership that brings together Uber and robotaxi pioneer Waymo, which already sells self-driving vehicle rides through its own app in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Waymo is now trying to expand into more cities by teaming up with Uber — an alliance that was announced last September.
The partnership begins in Austin and will, later this year, expand to offer robotaxi rides in Atlanta.
Waymo’s robotaxis will be hitting the streets of Austin ahead of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s goal of launching a fleet of electric self-driving cars later this year.
Uber’s network of human-driven cars will continue to give rides in Austin, too, but tapping into Waymo’s robotaxis will give it another selling point that could be popular among passengers eager to try out a cutting-edge technology.
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Uber’s longtime rival, Lyft, is also planning to add robotaxis to its network in Atlanta later this year as part of a partnership with May Mobility and hopes to begin deploying self-driving cars in Dallas as next year. Uber also has joined forces with Avride to begin dispatching robotaxis in Dallas next year.
Although there is no way passengers can guarantee that a ride ordered through Uber’s app in Austin will be provided by one of Waymo’s robotaxis, they can increase their chances of getting a self-driven car by going into their settings and turning on the autonomous vehicle preference.
When it sends a Waymo car to pick up a passenger, Uber’s app will send a notification that the ride will be provided by a self-driving car while also offering the option to switch to a human-controlled vehicle instead.
See here and here for some background. One thing to keep in mind is that this service, for now at least, is only available in a small subset of Austin.
With this launch, Waymo vehicles utilized with Uber will be able to travel across 37 square miles in Austin, including the Hyde Park, downtown and Montopolis neighborhoods. As more people adopt the service, Macdonald said Uber will expand on the number of vehicles as well as the geographic coverage zone, eventually building up to hundreds of vehicles servicing both Austin and Atlanta.
After too much futzing around in Google maps, I decided that 37 square miles is roughly the upper left portion of the inner Loop bounded by 610 to the north and west, and US 59 from its two points of intersection on the North Loop and West Loop. Which is to say, a fair amount of turf but still a pretty small fraction of the city of Houston, let alone the greater Houston area. I’m sure the actual 37 square miles in question covers one of the busier parts of Austin. I’m just saying it’s limited.
I’m sure Uber and Waymo are aware of that as well, and they’ll measure very carefully how much demand they get versus how much they expected. I’ll be very interested to see what that looks like as well. Among other things, that will inform next year’s rollouts in Dallas. When will we get that here in Houston? No clue at this time – too bad for us that Cruise crapped out, it seems. No huge loss as far as I’m concerned, but I’m not their target demographic. If that’s you, I suggest you let them know of your interest. Otherwise, they’ll get here when they get here. Just don’t use the Bad Guy’s service, OK? The Statesman, CNBC, and Axios have more.