A Week in the Silicon Valley: Robot Taxi

Now in San Francisco you can see an interesting sight in the middle of traffic: white cars with a red stripe and nobody inside. Those are cars from Cruise, a startup company that is testing prototype cars that drive completely by themselves and work as an Uber or Lyft. Just like for an Uber or Lyft, there is a Cruise app, and you can request a ride through it. However, for the moment the service is in a prototype phase, meaning that you can only use it in three cities, San Francisco being one of them, and even so not the whole of the city: just a restricted area of downtown. In addition, the service for now is only available between the hours of 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM. Finally, in order to use the app you need to get an invite from the company. Fortunately for me, a good friend of mine works at Cruise, so he got me an invite and I could check out the service when I was in the Bay Area.

It is great! I requested a car, and in some minutes one came to me. I have to confess that it is a strange sight to see a car with nobody inside moving towards you. It stopped next to the sidewalk and using the app I unlocked the car. I sat on the rear seat, and touchscreens informed me to press "Start" when I had buckled up. I did that and the car got moving. The screens show a map of the route as you go, and the ride was incredibly smooth. In fact, I dare say that it was smoother that a human driver could do. The car didn't have any trouble navigating the traffic in San Francisco, and it dealt with unexpected situations just fine, like a guy who stopped his car in the middle of the road. Traffic lights, left turns and all way stops were no problem. Still, it is a little bit of a funny feeling being on the rear seat of a car... with nobody else on the front seats (and the steering wheel moving by itself). Nevertheless, it was a great ride and I honestly believe that in the future all taxis are going to be driverless (and perhaps even regular cars too).