WAYMO
Driving change
My first WayMo is locked in a standoff with a human rival. I’ve hailed the driverless cab in a tricky triangular parking lot in Austin, and when it pulls in—a hulking white all electric Jaguar SUV with whirring sensors on all sides, conjuring a rhinoceros with hummingbird wings—it finds itself nose to nose with a pickup truck driver trying to exit. The driver glares at the Waymo, but sees nobody through the windshield. For a second, man and machine face off in a mundane version of The Terminator.
But then the pickup edges to the right, and the Waymo, sensing this, backs up and slides cleanly past and right up to where I’m standing, dumbfounded and relieved. As I open the car door, a pleasant, corporate female voice greets me with a “Good to see you, Andrew.” I clamber in and put on my seat belt, and the car merges out of the parking lot and into a future that, as the sci-fi ...