The Journey from Experiment to Everyday Autonomy

There was a time when Waymo's fully-autonomous passenger service was nothing more than five rickety PHEV minivans in a suburb of Phoenix, each accompanied by its own support crew of three. While progress seems slow in real-time, looking back like this has put things in a new perspective for me.

Hi, I'm Joel! Resident autonomous-vehicle enthusiast and Computer Engineering undergraduate student. I'm on a mission to document autonomous vehicle progress over time; mostly through my YouTube channel. Since I was small, I've always been drawn to technology in its differing forms. You could probably silo my interests into a handful of categories: heavy machinery and industrial equipment, manufacturing and automation, computing and software, cinematography and editing, radio communications and digital signals, etc.

Given that, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Waymo's initial announcement of Waymo One in December 2018 was a huge wake-up call. I'd been at least somewhat aware of Waymo's existence since first catching sight of the Google Self Driving Car Project on PBS sometime around 2012. Around June 2016, I spotted a Google-branded Lexus with Gen 4 test hardware doing laps around my neighborhood in Chandler, Arizona. Around July 2018, I spotted what I think to be a Waymo Chrysler Pacifica while en-route to the Detroit Airport.

Immediately following the December 2018 announcement, I reached out to Waymo Support, saying something to the effect of 'I acknowledge that this is just a press release and you probably won't have good news for me, but I NEED to get involved with this'—soon after receiving this reply:

Hi Joel,
We really appreciate your enthusiasm for Waymo One.
The best way to be a part of Waymo One is to first apply to the Early Rider program. You can apply on our website here.
Thanks again for your support.
All the best,
Jason

I have no recollection of actually following through with the registration, (If memory serves, I thought it was too much of a commitment; something gave me the impression that you had to have your whole family interview with employees for eligibility etc, and at the age of 17 I wasn't about to chuck my family into this) so, I promptly forgot about Waymo and moved on with my life.

Seven months later I received this email: (If Jason put me on the waitlist then, thanks bro 'preciate you.)

You can imagine the excitement. I was actually so nervous, I let almost 7 full days lapse before venturing out to give it a shot. And I do mean venturing out. My first time opening the app revealed—to my utter dismay—that despite testing around my neighborhood in 2016, they had chosen a service-area eastern boundary that cut off three miles to the west of my house. I bet this topic won't come up ever again.

June 20th, 2019 was the date of my first ride. I concocted the excuse that I was "going to get groceries" and set off for the chosen pickup point. After a fifteen-or-so minute wait (eventually I would hone my skills, and become a ninja at timing hails perfectly with my manually driven arrival at the pickup point) a white Chrysler Pacifica rounded the corner, into the parking lot off the main road, and glided to a stop right in front of me.

During this stretch from June 2019 to March 2020, I took occasional rides—perhaps one per month, as a treat. Each was an absolute joy, and I remember them fondly. The biggest difference from today? Every single ride had a safety-driver.

At this point Waymo was running something like a couple hundred cars around their Chandler service area, all with safety drivers. Whenever a customer would hail, one of these vehicles would be selected. Once they switched to driverless, the safety driver Pacifica fleet stuck around for a little while longer, until the 5th gen I-PACE testing was properly underway. After that, most of the testing seemingly moved to California. (It used to be that you couldn't drive around Chandler for longer than 2 minutes without seeing a Waymo. In early to mid 2021, they mostly disappeared.)

I'm sure that the test drivers of today are delighted that they need no longer put up with passengers. (Unless the Trusted Testers occasionally have them—I have no idea) I, in turn, am also glad to avoid the awkwardness of sitting in silence with another person (who's not really supposed to talk to me) for 45 minutes. You could play music on Google Play Music—I would always ask them first, then start the Oldies Out Loud playlist. Yet, there was something magical about it—rides with the drivers afforded a special peek behind the curtain that you couldn't get anywhere else. (Especially from a company so secretive about even the most trivial of operational minutiae.)

For example, the special screens placed in each safety-driver car, which were eventually phased out. These screens had a few extra details that have never been shown on the passenger screens, and likely never will be. Chief among them—the disengagement zones. Shown as red boxes, and known internally as "DZs," these are zones placed where the car is absolutely not allowed to go while in autonomous mode. My favorite example is from the on-ramp to the 101 freeway:

As far as I can tell, DZs tend to pop up in areas where the car got stuck too many times. For example, the first image above shows a bunch of DZs that were 100% my fault (I regret nothing). So, if you've ever seen a Waymo make head-scratching routing decisions, I wonder if it has anything to do with these invisible barriers being peppered absolutely everywhere.

Safety-drivers would also occasionally disengage the autonomy; and I only witnessed a handful of these. I'm unsure exactly when they were supposed to do this—perhaps if they felt that the car was about to do something unsafe, or maybe just stupid. But the most fun thing about safety-drivers was getting to innocently ask them tons of questions about the cars. Their behavior, how they work, anything like that.

One perk of being early to this driverless party was incredibly cheap rides. Through the duration of their lifespan, rides in the Pacificas averaged $4.99 base, plus 83¢/mile—not to mention the crazy promos. And you'd better believe I heavily abused those promos.

In early 2020, the full safety-driver passenger hailing fleet started getting a slow trickle of fully autonomous cars added to it, but only available to members of the Early Rider program. Let's back up a second and talk about that.

When I finally got access to Waymo in June 2019, I was added to the Early Rider program. Early Riders were under strict NDA: no photos, no videos, no sharing anything. All the while, there were whispered rumors of the select few people in a "public experience" program, who could share everything. Unfortunately, these 'ascended beings' tended to be normal people instead of nerds. Hence, they almost never posted anything about their experiences online—it was barely a drip feed of random photos. Every time I asked to be added to the public experience program, Waymo told me that 'more people will be added over time.'

Eventually, I convinced them. In January 2020, The Autonocast published their interview with then CEO of Waymo John Krafcik, and he said something that really put a bee in my bonnet:

You've talked about how this is supposed to boring, it's not supposed to be exciting. - Ed

Yeah, and by the way, I do think the groups are very different. We've specifically sought for our service–regular people, not evangelical tech enthusiasts, because we wanted broad appeal. We wanted to see if folks would take this new technology who weren't 'on the bleeding edge' of technology. And I think, by the way, that's one of the reasons why—because I see this from time to time—on places like Reddit, folks are disappointed that there aren't enough videos posted of our ride[s]. That's because, like, a lot of our riders are unfortunately not very socially active. Like, "this is just how I get to work!" you know. We cheer when our riders post something. Please, post! Have fun! We would love you to do so. - John

I remember sitting there listening to that, irked. How could he forget that the vast majority of the rider base was under NDA? All this time, I'd been reading people's questions across social media and forums, dying to make a video or two and really settle the matter. To share with the world what this technology looks like now, to spread the word. And that became my mission.

So I posted a tweet... that went nowhere. I think I may have poked them a second time later on. Whatever happened—by around the beginning-to-middle of March, I had been added to the public program. Time to make videos, right? Hooray!.....?

Remember how I mentioned that only Early Rider Program members received access to the driverless cars? Turns out, my timing for being accepted to the Public program was pretty unlucky. For about a week after Waymo's COVID-19 pause announcement, Early Riders had access to a service that was only the driverless fleet. Whereas previously it was down to a lucky dice roll whether you got an empty car, now you could force it. My dear mother was part of the ERP at the time, but she wasn't really interested—so my pleas for a ride fell upon deaf ears. (No hard feelings, though ❤️) At the end of that fateful week, Waymo One shut down entirely. For seven. Whole. Months. For seven painful months, we awaited updates...

On October 8th, 2020, a choir of angels sang from the heavens:

At long last—we're back, baby! And this time, even Public program members get the exclusively driverless service. In fact, the Early Rider Program has been abolished entirely. Almost immediately though something seemed off. Hang on... the service area looks different.

That night, I took my first ever driverless ride!

Before ever stepping foot in that car, those hours spent riding with safety-drivers ensured I was already very comfortable with Waymo's quirky robotic driving style. You could say I was 'eased into it' rather than diving straight in—but it was still just as magical all the same.

From this point on is the beginning of my YouTube series JJRicks Rides With Waymo, so the rest of the Pacifica era is actually relatively well documented. But I do have a couple more fun things I'd like to share that were different about this era.

Weather

It's taken for granted today, but Waymo used to just disappear at the slightest sign of rain. It's true! The Phoenix area isn't known for its rainfall, (though the ever-less-frequent monsoons are something to behold) but when it did rain, Waymo was ready.

Step 1: Recall the driverless fleet.
Step 2: Deploy safety drivers to the passenger fleet.
Step 3: If it's actively raining, disable hails entirely.
Step 4: Wait for 24 hours after the roads are dry and the last storm has passed, then redeploy driverless.

We saw a similar procedure happen in Austin during the recent snowfall. (Watching people freak out was somewhat hilarious)

Chase Vans

We rarely see them today, but Waymo Roadside Assistance has always been there, lurking in the shadows. They drive a white/cream colored Dodge Caravan with amber flashing lights (or sometimes a Ford Escape???) and they'll show up to rescue you, in the event that your car has gotten so stuck as to be unrecoverable by Fleet Response.

They started by always following close behind the driverless Pacificas, (even going so far as to arrive at my pickup point several minutes before the car did) then in early-to-mid 2021 they eventually switched to just being on-call. My most popular (long form) Waymo video is from when my car got stuck, and the combined efforts of both Fleet Response and Roadside Assistance were not good enough to get things under control. (it made international news) If you'd like to see what a Roadside Assistance takeover looks like, head to JJRicks.com and search "roadside."

Wait Time Roulette

Wait times seem to be mostly under control these days, (debatable) but the constrained supply of years past meant that they used to be utterly maddening. Almost like Russian Roulette, even. Five minutes—oops the app refreshed and now it's 35. Want to run into store for something quick? Hope you like sitting on a curb for an hour. Being burned just a few times trained me into checking wait times early and often, and I fought to hold onto a car for as long as possible.

Routing

Strange routing is another one of those early-days quirks that mostly disappeared with the 5th gen I-PACE rollout. (Though it seems to be reappearing somewhat in Austin, as of my October trip.) Oftentimes, I found that Waymo had 'favorite' routes it would piece together to create a whole trip. From small cuts through neighborhoods, all the way up to multi-mile crazy detours.

Conclusion

As fun or frustrating as they sometimes are, all of these little quirks are going to be worked out, or already were. And I think they make Waymo just that little bit more special to me because, as I've heard people say about AI—Waymo is currently the worst it will ever be from this point on. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been able to witness and experience the birth of this incredible technology, and to share it with all of you. Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, a huge thank you and congratulations to all of the team at Waymo for pulling off what is possibly the most impressive technological achievement in a century. (Though having personally witnessed the interior of a silicon fab, it is quite the contender...)

Thank you for following along on both my journey and the journey of Waymo's autonomous technology. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

— Joel

This article was entirely written by Joel Johnson (aka JJRicks), with very minimal editorial oversight from the Autonomy Central team.