Uber accelerates autonomous vehicles’ dream, hitches ride with Waymo

Waymo, the autonomous, self-driving car unit of Alphabet Inc, the parent of Google, has exclusively come on to the Uber platform in certain regions of the US, as the ride-hailing giant looks to accelerate its plans of becoming a hybrid platform where humans and autonomous vehicles run parallelly but AVs become mainstream.

“We believe autonomous vehicles are pivotal to the future of transport,” Andrew Macdonald, senior vice president of mobility and business operations, Uber, said at a press conference in Austin.

Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi had told analysts earlier that AVs are a “$1 trillion opportunity” in the US alone and the total addressable market (TAM) will only grow.

While the cost of a human driving on Uber is around $2 a mile, for an AV, it is less than $1. However, AVs require a lot of investment upfront to make the car road-ready.

Uber lets users in Austin set a preference so they have a higher chance of matching with a Waymo car when available close by. However, there is no option to book a Waymo on the Uber app.

To be sure, Waymo’s partnership with Uber is exclusive only to some cities in the US and does not extend to cities like San Francisco in California where Waymo runs its app —Waymo One — for booking rides.

“Waymo is trying out different modes – they need to test their product out as well so SF (San Franciso) was the first one. Uber is a global ride-hailing company, we do four million trips every hour to utilise assets like Waymo’s autonomous cars well. We can help with demand patterns, pricing et all which makes us the platform of choice,” Praveen Neppalli Naga, chief technology officer for mobility and delivery, told Moneycontrol in Austin.

An Uber customer takes a ride in a driverless Waymo car in Austin, Texas.

While Uber rides on with Waymo for now, the ultimate goal is to bring AVs to more regions in the US and to other parts of the world, including India.

Uber does not have a timeline for an India launch or a plan to bring AVs into the country in the near future.

In other countries, Uber partners with WeRide, Waabi, Motional, Aurora, Nuro and 10 others. Uber has even been keen on getting Tesla onboard but a deal is yet to be inked.

However, with Waymo the partnership is unique because it is the first time Uber will manage fleet services. This is being done in partnership with Avomo, one of its fleet managers, which will include vehicle cleaning, maintenance, inspections, charging, and depot operations.

Waymo, on the other hand, remains responsible for vehicle testing, roadside assistance, and certain aspects of rider support.

Uber’s AV ambitions are not limited to just cars. They extend to food deliveries as well.

Uber Eats on Avride

Uber is deploying small automated bots, developed by Austin-based Avride, which are wired to deliver food to customers with minimal human intervention.

A restaurant worker has to put the packaged food in an insulated box-like cabin and press a button to close the lid. The bot then leaves for the customer’s location and only the person with the pin can collect the food items.

While it cuts human intervention, it has teething issues like obstructions on roads, vandalising, far-off places and tall buildings. These will be ironed out once more bots are deployed on the roads and customers become familiar with the concept.

An Avride robot preparing to deliver food to an Uber Eats customer in Austin, Texas

As Uber looks to allay analysts' concerns around the company’s preparedness with AVs, the technological adoption, the efficiency of these systems, the scalability of these offerings and other aspects will be closely tracked to gauge how successful Uber has been in its AV play.

The reporter was in Austin, Texas at the invitation of Uber.