A New Day, A New Ride in a Driverless Cruise Robotaxi

I now took my already tenth and eleventh trip with a driverless robotaxi from Cruise, which turned out to be very unspectacular. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The trips in the two robotaxis from the Haight to Fillmore Street and back each took about 11 minutes, and all driving situations were handled safely. Even if once on the return trip a Honda driver cut us off or parked vehicles in the second right lane forced the robotaxi to swerve.

But before I show the videos, I wanted to share a short video that describes the perception in the public media. So on Thursday, Toronto-based TechCrunch journalist Darrel Etherington published an article titled It’s time to admit self-driving cars aren’t going to happen. In it, he lays out all the reasons of why thinks so. His main argument here is prominent self-driving technology startup Argo, which was forced to shut down this week.

Well; what is the best way to disagree? Provide counter-arguments? Explaining the state of the art? Or rather a video like this one?

TechCrunch: “It’s time to admit self-driving cars aren’t going to happen” – Hold my beer…

Now for the first ride of the day, which took me from Haight Street to Fillmore Street. Two points were quite interesting: many people were walking around in Halloween costumes, and quite a few passers-by and drivers of other cars noticed that there was no driver sitting inside. Amazement and excitement was often the result.

The second video is then from the return trip. Since I had the only a smartphone with me and the robot cab had to be opened with the cruise app on arrival, the camera recording interrupts and this short moment is missing.

This article was also published in German.

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