Waymo in Toronto

Took my first Waymo in Austin, TX last weekend and it did not go well. Was supposed to be a 9 minute drive, then randomly it tells us the ride has been 'slightly extended' to 45 minutes. Customer support dropped us off at a restaurant and said sorry. We ordered a human Uber.

Honestly the last thing I thought would happen would be that it would get lost. I thought maybe it would get confused on the road, but it drove better than most human drivers.

I happened to drive past 2 of them in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago. One was making a left turn into an alley, another was on the otherwise of the road so I never got to see how they actually drove but I giddily squealed like a happy pig rolling in the mud WAYMO! as I tried explaining to my shocked wife wtf was going on. It's been so long since I've had this feel of wonder when seeing technology.

I'm so going to ride in one once they're open to the public.

Waymo experience in San Francisco has always been awesome for me as a passenger.

When I read these threads, I sometimes wonder if I was the only person to have a positive/unproblematic experience with Waymo

I note the Toronto announcement cites job creation in the very first sentence. I live near another snowy city where Waymo has been teased, but has yet to have any significant presence:

https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/back-to-boston/

There apparently is a concerted effort to deny Waymo the legislative changes it needs, driven by a concern about job loss:

https://autonomousboston.com/massachusetts/waymo-opposition

I live in Denver, Colorado. A Waymo drove into a farmers market. Luckily, no one was hurt. I assume a human doing this would be charged with reckless driving. Local cops said there are no laws to charge a driverless car with a crime. Absolutely stupid for a city or state government to approve autonomous systems in their municipalities without first enacting very strict and very punitive laws around these systems. This goes for surveillance, sidewalk delivery bots, and especially driverless cars.

I only say this hoping Toronto is not like "The Wild West" and hopefully has protections around these tech companies stealing jobs and hording wealth in the interest of public efficiencies.

Will be interesting how it handles the tougher climate conditions.

Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos. Those Roadster jets may finally make a smooth ride throughout the whole of the city possible.

It obviously makes sense to have begun this autonomy journey in much easier cities. It'll be interesting to see the incremental improvements as they navigate how to handle everything that winter does to driving. I hope the plan isn't, "just stop operating for five months." Also a bit of a jerk, I am, but I'm looking forward to the funny videos.

I wonder how this will handle streetcars. It's illegal to pass a streetcar with the doors opening. There's a flashing signal on the vehicle, but it seems like a fairly important local difference. I hope it won't take a pedestrian death to get that sort of thing looked at.

A bit off topic, but I've been a Waymo booster for a minute here, as you can see in my comment history, but here in LA their pricing has jumped the shark a bit. Yesterday it quoted me > $10/mile for a short, < 5 miles trip. That was the return trip after I had a less expensive price of around $6/mile to the original destination (still pricey!).

I have zero insight into their pricing mechanism, but I was getting in the car coming back from, no exaggeration, one of the most expensive cities on the planet and so if I was Waymo I would probably price that ride pretty aggressively based on the location alone. Then you throw in all the other data points Google has about its users and I had my first "fuck me" moment where dynamic pricing really slapped me in the face (I've seen it firsthand with the airlines but Waymo is particularly insidious because of the use of my Google history).

And of course I'm aware Waymo has to price high while they're fleet-constrained or folks are going to be waiting forever for a car, but I hope they don't get too content with the absurd margin at $10+/mile. They will be tempted to do just that and so instead of flooding the market with fleet decide they'll put just enough cars in service to maximize profit instead of going for market share (of all riders I mean). But I fear that's exactly what's going to happen until there's credible competition.

I would imagine Canadians aren't going to want an American company replacing their drivers atm...

Saw a Waymo test car in Munich recently. Guess they will start operations in EU from here soon.

Curious how early they're announcing this. Service won't begin until 2028.

The second half of the post in Canadian French is a nice touch.

This give me hope that other snowy midwestern cities are right around the corner.

Edinburgh next please!

It'll be interesting to see how Waymo cars handle snow covering the road markings and road edges, and people flocking to new emergent lanes that do not correspond to the painted lines on the road, and people parking well into the road because of snow piles, etc, etc.

2028 arrival date.

I'd rather have bike lines :(

Winter is the real test here. Worked on lidar perception for a bit and falling snow throws returns everywhere, plus once the lane lines are under slush everyone just drives in the ruts the car ahead made. Curious how they handle those unofficial lanes.

[dead]

Just in time for the bike lane removals /s

[dead]

[flagged]

Some of you downvoted-to-dead this from another poster ("Hi, I'm Nelson" from Technologists for Democracy); new user who had low karma, so it's dead in the thread.

I frankly think it's a legit POV, and I'm also local to this, so I'm going to use my own much higher karma to post it again:

https://techfordemocracy.ca/2026/04/29/say-no-to-waymo/

I think there are legitimate concerns in promoting American BigTech as provider of infrastructure/services in Toronto. Concerns about data collection, about technological autonomy, and local employment.

I doubt they’ll cut it in Toronto traffic. What’ll they do when going west by DVP and lakeshore, only a human can effectively navigate that space

Wait ... isn't this Google? Aka a US company?

I understand the issue of technical power, mind you, but I don't really see how US companies expanding into Canada is a good idea as long as a hostile orange individual keeps on potty-mouthing Canadians.

Absolutely sick. Again they are using minimal job creations and people with diseases to push their job-killing, inhumane surveillance devices.

Shouldn't Waymo be renamed into ASIC, "American Super Intelligence Car"?

Toronto is already on Lake America (approved by Google). Maybe bring out the traffic cones or get another trucker protest.

What does robotaxi offer apart from less taxi-driver jobs? They can't inherently shorten journeys or avoid surface disruption, we already have taxi services in most cities. This just removes a human job and that's the progress.

They keep announcing new cities, but do they really follow up and actually launch there? I remember a couple of years ago they announced NYC as a market, but I don't think they're fully launched in NYC yet.

Waymo is great. But I don’t want it in my town. More money and data for Google. No improvement to my local public transport.