The year I learned to give up hating robot taxis

The year is 2024 and the robots have won.

At least Waymo has (seeya, Cruise). The last 12 months have been nothing short of a smiling-faced, soft-spoken, hostile takeover of the streets of San Francisco by the Alphabet-owned robotaxi company. A technology that was once viewed with skepticism by many appears to have become mainstream.

In any case, I am completely in favor of it. And no one is more shocked by this change of heart than me.

I’ve gone from hating the metallic beasts so proudly (and quietly cutting them off) to riding them regularly, showing them to visiting friends from my native UK, and spending a whopping $1,031.19 for 53 rides since June out of.

I’m not alone. Although Waymo refuses to share ridership data, we can expect rides to have increased significantly this year since the company opened the service to everyone in June 2024 after an invite-only rollout. From conversations with virtually every San Franciscan I know, as well as the number of visitors filming as I drive through North Beach, it’s clear that the robots are taking over our hearts, our minds, and our disposable income.

“After we opened San Francisco to everyone in the city in June, it became our fastest-growing city and offers the largest number of rides per week of our Waymo One cities,” a spokesperson said.

This enthusiasm for self-driving cars is truly astonishing. For a while I was determined to “screw the robots.” (I’m also the guy who assigned The Standard’s August 2023 story about people screwing her over.)