- [Lorraine] TuSimple isn't the only company
developing technology for self-driving semis.
Competitors include Waymo,
which shares a parent company with Google.
In the Phoenix Metro, it tests self-driving trucks
and has a depot in Chandler that houses a fleet
of self-driving taxis.
It opened up shop here in 2016,
and plans to expand in Mesa later this year.
- All right, closing the door. (car beeping)
(door clicking)
- [Lorraine] We got a ride with Dez Hatathli,
Waymo's local policy and community manager in Arizona.
- We have a couple options here.
You can actually use the Start Ride button here on top
or you can hit the Start Ride button on the screen.
- I'm in control of when - You are in control.
- This vehicle takes off. - You start us off.
- [Lorraine] All right.
(button blinging)
Other features include a button
that tells the car to pull over.
Another button puts a passenger in touch
with support staff.
Much like Uber and Lyft,
Waymo rides get requested through an app called Waymo One.
So far, service is only available
to about a thousand early riders
with most users ending up on a waitlist.
Feedback from early riders helps Waymo in its goal
to eventually remove safety drivers from its vehicles.
- We have a couple different sensors built on board
on all of our vehicles.
We have a vision system, which is the camera system
located up in the dome.
We also use a combination of the LiDAR and RADAR sensors.
They're located all the way around the vehicle.
It gives the car the ability to see 360 degrees around
for about three football fields up in length.
- I'm just checking 'cause that seemed like a,
maybe a risky turn, but we made it fine.
So is there a person or,
I mean who's really assessing?
Let's say the technology's there,
but there are also moves that we can't predict
what other humans are gonna do.
- Yeah, as humans we can't predict,
but the AI and the machine learning capabilities
on the vehicle does take that into consideration.
- What about in those extreme circumstances
where somebody does something that no one is expecting,
but it just happens?
How quickly can this vehicle respond
by maybe stopping or swerving if it has to?
- Well it takes those types of things into account
and, again, we are still in a testing phase right now.
So it still is trying to learn and trying to react.
- [Lorraine] Testing of autonomous vehicles in Arizona
came under national scrutiny in March of last year
when a self-driving car belonging to Uber
hit and killed a woman walking her bike
across a street in Tempe.
Federal investigators found Uber had
disabled emergency braking while cars
were in self-drive mode,
and instead relied on back-up drivers to intervene.
The back-up driver in this accident
did not react in time.
Arizona suspended Uber's right to test
self-driving cars in the state.
Waymo has never experienced a situation as severe,
but the company knows incidents like it
can stoke skepticism that it must overcome regardless.
How do you sell the public when they're so critical
of technology taking over things that we as humans
do every single day?
- Well the technology is relatively new.
I know there is a lot of apprehension
about giving your control of the car
away to a robot, but I think what we like to do
is be able to start the conversation early.
So before we come into a city,
we like to be able to sit down with local leadership,
also with law enforcement,
and anybody who's a stakeholder we wanna identify
and then really educate,
take that time to educate them about the technology,
but then also answer a lot of questions
that might come out of that.
- [Lorraine] Community stakeholders include
the East Valley Partnership,
an organization focused on promoting economic development
in the Phoenix Metro's eastern region.
President Denny Barney explained the group's
support for Waymo.
There will undoubtedly be taxicab drivers
and Uber and Lyft drivers who are sittin' at home
and saying, "What about me?"
What do you say to them?
- Well it's a fair question.
Ultimately, as you look at the role
of the PHX/East Valley Partnership,
and that's the organization that I'm associated with,
we're all about jobs.
Certainly, we like high-paying jobs,
jobs that focus on technology,
advanced manufacturing, fintech and other jobs
that will be more insulated with the ups and downs
of economic cycles.
But every high-paying job brings with it
a secondary and tertiary job.
Our feeling is simply this.
This is the evolution of transportation.
It's happening right here in the East Valley.
The way we move people, the way we move goods,
is going to change dramatically in our lifetimes.
- [Lorraine] How are you going about
sort of balancing your relationship with Waymo
and listening to the community?
- Frankly we haven't heard a tremendous amount of concern
from the community, to be clear.
There are those that are concerned.
There are those that don't understand,
but what we've seen is, on the other hand,
we've seen a community that has embraced
technologies like Waymo.
And they're saying, "Hey, we want to be
"the hotbed for innovation.
"We wanna be ground zero for autonomous vehicle testing."
Things are gonna change,
and we can either change appropriately
with the world around us,
or we can sit back and watch it move beyond us.
And that's not what we're gonna do.
And I think this community has chosen
generally at a very high level to embrace
the Waymo-type businesses, because they believe
in the value that they bring to our community.
- [Lorraine] Why do this versus getting in a car
with a person and going where you need to go?
- So I think the great thing about what we have here
as a ride hailing service,
is the fact that you're getting
the same vehicle every time,
and when we actually remove the safety driver
out of the car,
then you really would get that peace of mind
of not necessarily getting in the car with a stranger,
because you'll have the Waymo be your driver
and be there to pick you up
and take you where you wanna go.
- [Lorraine] After our ride ended,
we returned to Waymo's depot,
and our conversation turned to the company's plans
for growth in Arizona.
Let's look into the future about five years.
How does this change, what's different?
- Our goal is to continually add more vehicles
to our fleet,
also to increase our current service area
from expanding from the East Valley
further into the Phoenix Metro area.
We are also looking at opportunities
that this technology might bring
to existing transit services.
For example, here in the Valley
we have a partnership with Valley Metro,
so we are actually examining last mile options
that a user might want to use
and incorporate into the routes that they want to take
or commute on the light rail.
This technology is very transformative,
but at the same time we don't necessarily
want to be very disruptive on existing transport services.
We'd rather enable and kind of lend our technology
and our services into the existing transport.
- About how many people do you have employed here
in the Phoenix area? - We have hundreds
that we have here at this depot,
and then potentially when we open our second location
we will be employing hundreds there as well.
What's really exciting is that with the new technology
and the new opportunities to create new jobs,
indeed there's probably a lot of jobs out there
that we haven't thought of that we're gonna be needing
down the roadway.
It's very exciting to think about how
that's gonna transform both our business
but also the local cities and economies.
- The fleet that you have here,
we see people who are driving them.
But eventually the people won't be
driving the vans anymore,
so what becomes of them?
- A majority of our drivers here,
and I'm a good example of that as well,
as a former driver I've transitioned into a new role.
And we also have other drivers on the team
that have moved to technical operation
or some of our other support teams.
So with this new technology there are
a lot of opportunities that could be gained.
We're still very much in the early process
of rolling this technology out,
but the opportunities are gonna be there.