Self-Driving Cars

Silicon Valley is making great strides in self-driving cars. The two that you’ll see a lot of are Waymo (by Alphabet/Google) and Cruise.

Cruise

My partner recently got access to Cruise self-driving cars in San Francisco. For now, you can only ride at night, sometime past 10pm, and there’s a limited section of SF that it serves.

I finally got to ride one in March 2023.

The exterior of a Cruise car as it picks you up. Each Cruise car has a name, you can see this car’s name (“Tadpole”) on the front of the hood.

The side view of the car as it picks you up. A decal says it’s recording both audio and video.

The interior of the car. Touchscreens (censored here) show a map and planned route to your destination. You can see there’s no one in the front. There’s also a button labeled “End Ride” if you just want to get out.

It’s a somewhat surreal experience riding in one of these for the first time. It’s like Knight Rider, but there’s no stunt driver dressed up like the driver’s seat.

The car as it begins to steer itself to the right.

Cruising down the street in the Cruise.

Here are a few more photos.