The Robotaxi That Upended My Expectations

I recently took a business trip to San Francisco, the Bay Area's high-tech hub. This time around, I was genuinely startled by the number of homeless people on the main streets. You rarely visit a place and find that it actually matches its urban legend — usually those stories get exaggerated in the retelling. But San Francisco genuinely gave me a "wow, this really isn't an exaggeration" feeling.

A Cautious Ride: Smooth and Surprisingly Good

I'd visited San Francisco a few times over the past several years, but its reputation seemed to keep getting worse. Everyone warned me about the homelessness on the main streets and the wave of retail closures downtown. The city's governance crisis has gone from something Bay Area friends would mention in casual conversation a few years back to a story that now even shows up in Taiwanese TV news. Explanations for San Francisco's governance breakdown vary widely. Unlike cities that collapse from poverty, San Francisco is actually extremely wealthy — many people instead blame it on left-wing idealism taken too far.

Despite these visible problems, San Francisco remains the capital of this AI boom — every major AI company has a presence there, and the most advanced, most active AI companies are still headquartered and operating out of the city. Not long after I landed, I spotted an Anthropic ad. An AI company advertising at the airport — this really is the AI capital.

One possible explanation is that young software engineers simply prefer urban living — the quiet suburban Bay Area lifestyle can feel a bit too boring, while San Francisco, whatever else you say about it, is still a proper city with more nightlife and restaurants. San Francisco's spirit of innovation also remains strong, and as a natural testing ground for AI close at hand, the city opened commercial robotaxi service back in September 2023. This is genuine commercial service — picking up and dropping off passengers just like any other taxi. Around downtown, you realize Waymo's fleet is no longer some small-scale experiment; you'll spot one every few minutes. Watching an empty steering wheel turn on its own from a distance is honestly fascinating.

Of course, having come all this way, I couldn't just watch — I had to ride one. After some effort, we finally managed to hail a robotaxi. Once booked, we watched the car approach from a distance, our colleague's name displayed on it — sure enough, it was ours. We opened the door, got in, and a voice system asked us to buckle our seatbelts. It didn't bother with small talk (a lot of friends have since asked me whether the robot chatted with us) — it just drove straight to our destination.

Contrary to what you might imagine, aside from the absence of a driver, there's nothing particularly unusual about the car. Apart from the array of spinning sensors mounted on the outside, the driver's seat looks exactly like any other driver's seat. My colleague and I sat there watching the steering wheel turn on its own, and the ride itself was extremely smooth and comfortable. If you just looked out the window, you wouldn't feel anything unusual at all — you might even think the driving was better than most people you know — until you turned around and saw the empty driver's seat, with the wheel turning itself.

On the way back, the car that pulled up for us had actually just dropped off another passenger, who got out right as we got in — the dispatch efficiency was genuinely impressive. During the ride, the car's judgment on when to yield to pedestrians was precise every time. A friend joked that Waymo and Tesla should play a driverless version of chicken to see which car yields first. My own sense from riding one is that these cars are so cautious in their judgment that they'd all be thoroughly chicken — two robotaxis would never actually crash into each other.

Waymo has actually been at this for a long time — it's a subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet. Waymo is currently the leader in robotaxis, having already gone fully commercial and operated in Phoenix and San Francisco for quite a while now; it's also begun expanding into Los Angeles.

Time magazine also named Waymo one of its 100 most influential companies. Robotaxis are essentially a marathon, not a sprint. Waymo got an early start, and at various points Uber's and Cruise's robotaxi units looked like they might pull ahead — but serious traffic accidents eventually forced both rivals to abandon or slow down their efforts, and even Apple gave up on its similar project. Waymo alone has moved slowly but steadily, methodically entering new cities, avoiding any catastrophic accidents, and accumulating the operational data that matters most — expanding its lead one careful step at a time.

Starting this year, a new challenger, Tesla, is also set to enter the market, and more EV makers are eyeing this space as well. But having ridden in one myself, I think Waymo's advantage is unmistakable. Its sensor suite is highly diverse and covers all the major sensing technologies, its driving judgment is extremely cautious, and with so many real paying customers generating real operational data to train on, its lead should only widen. And then there's the fact that Google, needless to say, has deep pockets — Waymo doesn't face immediate pressure to turn a profit. That's precisely where its predecessors failed and where Waymo has succeeded, because the public simply will not tolerate a serious accident involving a robotaxi.

Cars, Real Estate, Transportation: All Up for Redefinition

After riding in a robotaxi, I came away with a much deeper sense of how transportation — and social behavior more broadly — is likely to change. Actually seeing a smartphone in person versus merely imagining what one might do turned out to be two completely different experiences. Going forward, robotaxis will reshape social behavior in major ways, and that shift will likely happen within the next decade. Car ownership, real estate, and transportation will all end up defined very differently than they have been over the past hundred years. My other takeaway is that the San Francisco Bay Area remains the most advanced place in the world, precisely because it's a city where so many possibilities can actually be tried out. That's an important reason why America's AI industry — and its broader new economy — keeps pulling ahead, and it's why, over the long run, I remain very bullish on the US economy.