Taking a driverless Waymo in Phoenix over the holidays was fun but unsettling

Like many travelers over the holidays, I got stuck last week in my effort to get back home.

I live in San Francisco and was in Phoenix with my family. We picked that as our New Year’s meeting spot so we could attend the college football Fiesta Bowl, pitting Notre Dame against my brother’s former squad, Oklahoma State.

My flight home was scheduled for Monday morning. But because of severe winter storms in parts of the country and airline staffing shortages from the fast-spreading Covid omicron variant, it was delayed three times.

Rather than bum around the airport, I decided to do some work and have some fun in the process.

Phoenix is the only market where Waymo is currently operating its self-driving ride-hailing service, Waymo One. As the Alphabet beat reporter, I thought — what better time to give it a shot? No employees, no public relations staff and no camera crew. Just me, my phone and a minivan with no driver.

Last time I rode in a Waymo was 2019, a year after Waymo One started offering trips to select riders. I visited the company’s Phoenix office and took a ride in a self-driving car, which at the time could only operate with a safety driver behind the wheel.

Since then, Waymo has raised $5.5 billion in funding from investors including Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and T. Rowe Price. It also launched Waymo Via, a local delivery service, and announced that it’s testing self-driving vehicles in San Francisco and New York.

The company says its cars have driven more than 20 billion miles in simulation and over 20 million miles on public roads.

Waymo only reaches a portion of the sprawling Phoenix area. I knew this because earlier in my stay I’d tried to order a car, but the app told me I was outside its service region. According to its website, Waymo One operates in suburbs, including Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert.

I already had an account from my prior unsuccessful attempt. To register, I had to connect to my Google user account by entering my Gmail address and password. Next, I added my credit card information.

Then I went to open the map to summon a vehicle. When I attempted this a few days earlier, a message popped up, saying “Autonomous specialists are temporarily accompanying rides, which means someone will be in the driver’s seat.” I had to click “OK” before proceeding. That was a bit of a surprise because in October 2020, then-CEO John Krafcik, who left the company in April, said in a blog post that, “Waymo is opening its fully driverless service to the general public in Phoenix.”

Julianne McGoldrick, a Waymo spokesperson, told CNBC in an email that humans sit behind the wheel “during inclement weather.” However, it hadn’t rained around the time that I received the notification.

The rest of the setup was straightforward, similar to signing up for Lyft or Uber.

On Monday, the day of my actual Waymo trip, I took a 15-minute Lyft ride from my hotel near the airport to the Raintree Ranch Center in Chandler, so I could finally be in range to order a car. At the shopping center, I grabbed a cup of coffee at Starbucks and opened the Waymo One app.

For my desired location, I picked a Trader Joe’s store several miles away, towards the northern edge of the service area. The app estimated a car would be available in 10 minutes, and kept me posted on its progress by the minute. It showed a small photo of the car, a Chrysler minivan, that was on its way.

I couldn’t find the car at first.

The map showed me where it was, but since I wasn’t familiar with the area, that wasn’t much help. The app gave me the option of tapping the “honk” button. As soon as I did, I heard the honk loud and clear and began walking toward the sound, which was a few hundred feet away from where I was standing.

I approached the van and was again surprised. It was illegally parked in a fire lane, which was apparent by the brightly painted red curb. It was also partially blocking a lane used by cars entering and exiting the shopping center. One car had to go around the Waymo to get into the parking lot.

The van had its hazard lights on, the Waymo logo on the side and a dashboard displaying my initials. I clicked the door handle, jumped in and strapped on the seatbelt. A woman’s voice welcomed me. The passenger seat in front of me had a screen that displayed a map and the car on the road.

A partition read, “Please stay in the back. Don’t touch the steering wheel.” That led me to wonder if Waymo had experienced an attempted hijacking before, a potential risk I hadn’t considered until that moment. The cupholders held hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes. In the seat pocket in front of me was an N95 mask that was the same aqua color of the Waymo logo.

Despite spending a week in the Phoenix area, I saw very few Waymos. It was a stark contrast to my visit in 2019 and to current day San Francisco, where I’ll often see several test cars on the roads in a day. The company says it has 300 to 400 vehicles in the Phoenix area, including Chrysler Pacifica vans and some Jaguar I-Pace electric SUVs.