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We have the partnership with Uber because we think it's important for us to create an AV ecosystem around this technology. Like, this isn't going to be, we've created technology and we're going to figure out everything ourselves. Like, that would be foolish and very expensive and we'd never find ourselves profitable. But having companies that are experts in integration, having automotive partner, you know, we have, we're not building the car, having network partners, having fleet operating partn
That's one of the things. And the other one I would say is what you just said, which is, you know, it's a brilliant team. And the team works really hard, but like bad things are going to happen in the real world with human drivers around our cars. And the team takes that so seriously. And so that's, it's, it's like, it's like having worked at, I mean, I worked at Airwell and I knew we were there too, but like other kinds of tech companies. I know every kind of company is stressful. It's a differ
I think one of the hardest challenges was making, we made such a big decision in going fully autonomous, which is sort of the reason we're here during COVID. You mean getting that person out? The person from behind the wheel, scaling this. And so then bringing the culture back together to now scale. So we just needed like, we needed a minute to lock back in.
So, on the question of open sourcing, that isn't something that we're spending a lot of time talking about right now. Okay.
So we really think about it as this sort of learning journey, but it's also just where we started, right? I mean, part, part of the conversation we get to have now is what would, if the driver was at this level of maturity, where would we have started? Um, that said, we have global aspirations. We're always thinking about them. ... There's a lot of confusion about full autonomy versus partial autonomy. Um, there's not a lot of legislative activity that's informed by experts. Right. So I don't kn
Yeah, we've said sort of publicly and we've had partnerships where we've made the technology available. Um, it's a question of when, you know, when will a level four sort of product be available and interesting to consumers at scale? You know, that's part of the question, but absolutely. This is part of our strategy.
Um, yeah, not, not going to get into that other than to say to you, I, this is the thing I spend all of my time focused on and we are on, but there's a path there. There's completely a path there.
And we just did a UX study. And we found that a third of people use the service in San Francisco to go to their doctor appointments. We're like, that feels like real life. And 36% were using the vehicles to go to local businesses, which is also real life. And so these are the kinds of signals that we're trying to get. As far as like personally owned cars, we've always had as part of our strategy from the beginning that we would start with ride hailing and local delivery, and that eventually we w
I think what you just described is exactly the AV ecosystem that I'm talking about. And yes, out of necessity. ... let everyone do what they're good at. Like we're good at building this driver.
it definitely led to more scrutiny in San Francisco because there was already an active and continues to be a fairly active voice against technology in San Francisco. And so we needed to continue to engage, which we were already doing, provide more data, which we're of course willing to do. And I think over time, what we'll see is, you know, we have to get to a place where the amount of data that we're providing actually advances the safety concerns.
we drive in a week more than a human drives in a lifetime. ... we're the only company where it's one driver. ... This is one driver learning all the time in unison.
one of the largest, uh, reinsurers in the world, Swiss Re, has actually been doing our safety. ... I think they're very eager to get the data sets that we're releasing. Like we really set 20, uh, safety papers last year. They're all wanting to understand what the actual impact of this technology can be.
We have the partnership with Uber because we think it's important for us to create an AV ecosystem around this technology. Like, this isn't going to be, we've created technology and we're going to figure out everything ourselves. Like, that would be foolish and very expensive and we'd never find ourselves profitable. But having companies that are experts in integration, having automotive partner, you know, we're not building the car, having network partners, having fleet operating partners, publ
And so over time, you're certainly going to see us announce new places, but you're also going to see, like in San Francisco, we launched a 24-hour service in a limited territory. And over time, we've expanded that territory.
And because we're building a driver and not a car, you'll see us scaling in a number of ways. So we have partnerships right now. We have a partnership with Uber in Phoenix. Why are we doing that? People are like, oh my gosh, I got my Uber Eats in a Waymo. Like, why are you all doing that? It's because we're building a driver. And so we're trying to figure out all of the ways in which this driver could be applied to future use cases.
And so the challenge that we have to tackle with a lot of humility is how prepared is the public? You know, humans can kill other people. How prepared is the public to accept that this isn't going to be a panacea and it's not going to be perfect?
So we are pushing to make sure people who put autonomous vehicles on the road have to demonstrate their safety case. We think the worst thing that could happen is introducing a new technology that doesn't actually improve this problem. Because it'll kill the whole industry.
For us as a company, we are obsessed. Our culture is about safety. This mission is about safety. And we want to expand the number of people who have access to mobility options. If you need a driver's license, then it's just like every other mobility platform. You have to be behind the wheel.
We learned that ourselves back in 2015 and 16 and 17. We had an autopilot highway product. We allowed employees at the time, Google employees, to ride in that product. We told them to pay attention. We told them, you have to be alert and be prepared to take over. What did they do? They were human. We want to do other stuff when we're in the car. On the phone. Like, I want to be on the phone. I want to get to that meeting. I need to send that last email. I need to check whether or not my son's do
It's given us the opportunity to scale at this point. We're the only company that's doing level four driving on public roads 24 hours a day.
So obviously, we have conviction that we need LiDAR, radar, and cameras. We have all three.
Level four and above means you do not need a driver's license, nor do you need to sit behind the wheel. So when you're focused on tackling the hardest challenge first, it's really important for the driver, the Waymo driver, to ingest dense urban environments. Because that is where the driver is going to learn the most. Sitting on freeways, seeing the same thing every day can be predictable. It's not entirely predictable, but it's not additive to what the machine learns.
So I think, just for everyone to orient, when you think about the levels of autonomy, we are only focused on level four and above.
we're testing on highways in Phoenix and San Francisco. With safety drivers. With employees. Yes. And a human behind the wheel.
What we've been able to determine as of June of this year with over 22 million, what we refer to as RO miles, those are miles that are fully autonomous. We've been able to have 83% fewer airbag deployments, which, of course, is important because those are high impact, and 73% fewer injury-causing crashes.
You've done, it seems like, millions of rides now. No fatalities, correct? That's right.
we've had a 24-7 ride hailing service around the clock. It was in 2020 during COVID, though, that we removed the driver from behind the wheel.
It's completely true. It's a true thing. And it's over 100,000. Over 100,000. Week per week. Yeah.