Has technology ruined cruise control? Drew takes ride in a Waymo!

Looking Out - The Podcast: Ep. 15

15 February, 2024

Welcome to Looking Out, a newsletter and podcast that connects the dots across the automotive industry, mobility, design, and culture. Looking Out is brought to you by Joe Simpson and Drew Smith. If you like what you see and hear, tell your friends!

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This podcast contains super-cool footage of Drew’s ride in a Waymo robotaxi. But, if you prefer to listen to the podcast, click here.

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Announcements

1. Drew’s CES trend report has been going down a treat with some super-interesting folk. If you’d like to be among them — and even have Drew talk you through the report on a call — then:

2. We’re going to do an AMA (ask me/us anything) segment on the next podcast. So, if there’s a Looking Out-type question that’s burning you up and you’d love to hear us answer it, hit the button, leave it in the comments, and we’ll pick it up on the next show:

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While I was in the States for CES, and Joe was in the States for work, we both had the chance to try a range of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

Me over on the West Coast? I got a few days each with Tesla Autopilot with Autosteer (in a Model 3), and Hyundai’s Highway Driving Assist II (in an Ioniq 5).

Meanwhile, Joe over in the east got to spend a few hundred miles with GM’s SuperCruise, as fitted to a Cadillac Escalade.

Over the past few years, car makers, tech companies, regulators and — sadly — far too many consumers have found themselves in real trouble with some of these systems. You see, the promise of the “self-driving car” as pumped by Elon and Tesla has proven just too irresistible to ignore.

Manufacturers have rushed systems to market to try and keep up with the Silicon Valley upstart. And consumers have rushed to buy them to keep up… well, keep up with what, exactly? The Joneses? The traffic? The latest technology that will supposedly protect them and their loved ones from the madness on the roads?

Here’s the thing: neither Joe nor I are really sure what these systems are for. They are, anecdotally at least, less relaxing to use than basic cruise control. And within the confusion they often promote, particularly about who or what is in control of the vehicle and when, there lies life-threatening danger.

When oversold and underbaked, the idea of the “self-driving car” and the driver assistance systems on which they depend muddy the waters of 120 years of collective understanding of how humans and cars can work together in relative harmony. These systems introduce an often unknowable and unintelligible third party in to the human-machine interface, one that will happily grab the wheel and stomp the pedals in ways that are often irritating and, at worst, deadly*.

With a Waymo, on the other hand, there’s no such confusion. You, the human, are a passenger. All you need do is hail your taxi, sit back, perhaps play some music (I recommend St. Thomas by Sonny Rollins), and ride. And the vehicle? Fully robotised, it just gets on and does its job of doing the driving.

Part of the magic of the whole experience, as I explain in the podcast, is how clearly Waymo sets the expectations around the passenger experience: from the way the car looks, all carbuncled with safety-suggesting sensors, to how you hail it, to how it welcomes you and communicates with you throughout the journey. You’re never in any doubt about what to do, or what not to do, and herein lies Waymo’s strength.

While neither Joe nor I believe that cities full of Waymos are the future, the service is nevertheless a far more convincing glimpse in to what an autonomous future — wildly expensive tech and domain limitations included — might look like than anything automotive OEMs are currently shilling to consumers.

A massive shout out to Ed Niedermeyer of The Autonocast and Chris Bonelli of Waymo for making this episode possible.

*I’ve previously covered my experience with Volkswagen’s woeful system on The Next Billion Cars. You can listen to that here.

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