An Uber and Lyft Driver of 10 Years Reacts to His First Robotaxi Ride

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jason Munderloh, a part-time ride-hailing driver of 10 years and lifelong San Francisco resident. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider paid for Munderloh’s rides in a Waymo and a Tesla Robotaxi.

I’m from San Francisco and have been driving for Uber and Lyft for 10 years.

I also organize a group called Rideshare Drivers United in the Bay Area.

I’ve seen the Waymos, the Cruises, and the Zooxes around the city but have avoided taking robotaxis. I don’t want to give these companies money, and I don’t support their business model. I’m always happy to talk with other rideshare drivers — it’s part of what I do as a union organizer.

I had some safety concerns, but I also think having the added element of a human driver makes travel better and more efficient.

After my experience, I’d give Waymo and Tesla Robotaxi four out of five stars. The rides felt fine, but I think there’s always room for improvement.

The pros are what I thought they might be: You don’t have to deal with a person — at least in a Waymo.

But I would’ve liked to talk to a person. I like talking to people.

Every person that I get a ride from — they’re from Eritrea, they’re from Bangalore, they’re from some place I just never really thought about, and I get to be near this person, talk to them, and find out what they think of the city that I grew up in.

I think that’s amazing.

Spokespeople for Tesla, Waymo, and Uber did not respond to a request for comment.

Waymo is pretty smooth

I appreciated that the Waymo pulled up with its hazard lights on. I think that’s the right thing to do.

The Waymo, however, stopped about a block away from where we were. I could miss a star or get a low rating for pulling up that far away from a rider for sure.

My immediate impression of the ride was that it was pretty smooth. It’s not zippy, but not frustratingly slow. The inside of the car was reasonably well-maintained.

The Waymo also has good eyes. The interface on the center console showed that it had noticed the turn signal coming from a truck a few lanes over.

I see the appeal of having time to yourself in a car and being able to put on whatever music you want. But I didn’t like the part where I was sitting next to an empty driver’s seat.

It just felt strange, and it’s hard to say why. The Waymo didn’t quite have the personality of a human. For example, it was always exactly in the middle of the lane.

Maybe that’s why I got the uncanny valley feeling — you can’t quite place it, but something’s not quite right.

But after a while, the novelty of not having a person there wore off quickly. Maybe I’m jaded because I’ve seen them around the city for a long time, but I wouldn’t pay more for one of those.

It was fine. It was a car ride.

Tesla is more zippy

I like Teslas. I considered buying the car before I ended up with a Chevy Bolt, which kind of has similar styling inside as a Tesla in some ways.

I approved of the route the vehicle took. The navigation and ride felt mostly the same as the Waymo. It felt safe under the conditions we were in.

The Waymo felt a little more conservative, while the Tesla’s acceleration was just a little bit quicker.

Overall, they’re just normal drivers.

I might use entertainment options like Netflix or YouTube if it were a long drive or if I were particularly internet-addicted. However, most of these things you’d do on your phone anyway.

It’s interesting that a person is sitting in the car with you. One of the main draws of Waymo is that you’re alone in the car.

However, I do appreciate that there’s a driver there at least because if something went wrong, there would be somebody to take over in a way a Waymo can’t.

But at the point, what’s the purpose? Why not have the driver there the whole time?

So there are mixed feelings. It seems kind of pointless on one hand, but on the other hand, the point is to get to a destination safely, and sometimes, you need a human for that.

My concern with robotaxis is less about the ride

I think I’m a better driver than a robotaxi — for now.

I would’ve gotten to the destinations quicker and safer with a more efficient route.

Waymo and Tesla did as good a job as they could, given the technology the cars are equipped with — cameras, lidars, or maps.

Having a person in the car who can pick up all the cues of the environment like the smells, the sights, the anticipation of where construction will likely be in one part of the city — all these little things that have nothing to do with the simplest form of driving — those are real things and they really do help you get from one place to another.

The robotaxis also don’t have personality. The experience was a little sterile.

There’s the loss of human connection, which is something I would hate to lose.

We’re already so disconnected from each other that we’re able to self-select human experiences that we have with each other.

It does not end well if we just continue not to think about other people and not know about other people’s very different experiences from our own.

However, most of what I think about robotaxis is about its economic impacts — and that doesn’t stop at the fact that it’s putting a driver out of work or driving their wages down.

That driver who just lost their job? They used to spend in the local economy.

I would like people to evaluate what that would mean for San Francisco, that suddenly, many people not only lose their jobs but are not spending money back into the economy.

For the most part, the reason people think that robotaxis are inevitable is because we haven’t really fought to create any control over whether we’re going to have autonomous vehicles on our roads in any organized way.

As a matter of what’s happening on our roads that we pay for through our taxes, this should be something that’s worked out somewhat democratically in a way that it hasn’t been.

I don’t want to remove these things from the roads entirely — unless that’s what the people want.