Well. That Was
Different. Las Vegas, Nevada

I want to tell you about the moment I realized I wasn't scared. I'd just taken a ride in a Zoox, a purpose-built autonomous vehicle running a pilot in Las Vegas, and the part that stuck with me was how unremarkable the whole thing felt.

I was on a flight into Las Vegas, getting fed the usual travel articles, and one of them was about the Zoox pilot running in the city. It caught my attention. When I landed, I looked up the stops and realized it actually worked for a trip I needed to make. So I did it.

I hailed the car on the app, walked to the pickup location like I'd been told to, and climbed inside a vehicle that had no steering wheel, no driver, no front in any conventional sense. It sort of looked like two fronts, or neither, depending on your mood. Small wheels. Panel doors on each side. Four flat wireless phone chargers wedged between the seats, which I thought was a nice touch.

And then it just started moving.

The thing that unsettled me, and I want to be clear that it did unsettle me, was how completely fine I felt. I'd gone in half-expecting some instinct to kick in, some quiet voice telling me this was wrong, that I should be gripping something. It never showed up.

I think what happened is that the Zoox is not trying to be a car. The car companies making autonomous vehicles are mostly taking a regular car and quietly removing the person from it, which is deeply strange, because you keep waiting for someone to grab the wheel. The Zoox doesn't have a wheel to grab. It doesn't have a proper windscreen. The headrests on the seats in front of you block most of your view forward, so your brain doesn't fully register that it's operating a vehicle at all. It feels more like a very small, private bus.

We got up to 43 miles an hour. I know because there was a little display. The same display let me choose from three radio stations, control the temperature, and press a button at the end to open the door on the safe side of the road.

The lane changes were normal. The turns were normal. Everything was normal. I kept waiting for the moment that wasn't normal and it didn't come, and at some point I stopped waiting and started to wonder whether my discomfort with full self-driving in regular cars has less to do with the technology and more to do with the format. A steering wheel with nobody's hands on it bothers you in a way you can't quite explain. No steering wheel at all, it turns out, doesn't bother you at all.

I'd take it again. It felt private in a good way. Just you, or just you and your friends hanging out in your car.

I haven't been in another autonomous car so I can't compare. But the Zoox impressed me, and I don't impress easily, or at least I tell myself that.

Zoox is running a limited pilot in Las Vegas. You can hail rides through the Zoox app.