After more than a decade of hype, driverless taxis are finally becoming a reality. We’ve heard the promises for years — cars that would pick you up without a steering wheel or a driver in sight — but this time electric vehicles are actually navigating city streets around the world, picking up passengers, dropping them off at airports, offices, and homes, and accumulating millions of trips.
The company that’s in the lead in the U.S. is Waymo, Google’s self-driving spin-off. While Tesla has promised these vehicles for years, they are an also ran for now. They’ve badly hampered themselves by abandoning LIDAR — short for Light Detection and Ranging — a sensing technology that uses laser light to measure distances and build highly accurate, three-dimensional maps of the environment.
Waymo has been expanding its service. Its robotaxis now run in parts of Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and are heading next to Austin and London.
So what are the benefits? Riding in a Waymo offers a fundamentally different experience from taking an Uber with a human driver. The first and most obvious advantage is privacy — you ride alone, free from small talk, judgment, or awkwardness.
Many passengers, especially women, say they feel safer without a stranger behind the wheel, avoiding the occasional harassment or discomfort that has plagued ride-hailing. Every Waymo trip is recorded, providing full transparency in case of an incident, and the car itself is a model of consistency: it never speeds, texts, or drives aggressively.
Unlike Uber drivers who can cancel rides or take longer routes, Waymos follow the rules precisely, don’t surge in price, and never refuse a destination. The cars are uniformly clean and quiet, managed by a fleet team rather than individual owners. There’s no tipping screen or social pressure at the end — just an efficient, predictable ride that feels more like a private shuttle than public transport.
Because the vehicles are electric and connected directly to Google Maps, pickups and routes are smooth and reliable. For many riders, the biggest difference isn’t just technology — it’s trust, safety, and the peace of mind that comes from a car that behaves exactly as it’s programmed to.
Uber has entered the self-driving business, not by building its own tech, but by planning to connect riders to whichever autonomous fleets are available. They become the middleman for robotaxis from whoever gets there first.
Meanwhile, China has been making huge strides and has already overtaken U.S. companies.
Baidu Apollo Go has become the largest robotaxi networks in the world. It operates in Beijing, Shenzhen, and several other cities in China serving over 6 million rides to paying customers. While no U.S. company has yet deployed self-driving cars in winter weather, Baidu is the first major service to have done so with good success. They have also begun trials in Europe, South America and the Middle East. We will not see these Chinese companies in the U.S. because their cars face a 100% tariff.
So, get ready for you first self-driving ride. they’re just around the corner coming your way.
