Riding the Future: Inside Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox Autonomous Rides with Kevin Chao

A new autonomous car from Amazon called Zooks.

It was the early adopter of the Waymo, as well as the Tesla Robotaxi, and the recent

car access to Zooks.

With over 60 rides of the three top autonomous cars, they also have a accessibility setting

that allows you to have detailed audio description.

Please welcome Kevin Chao.

We hope you enjoy.

We want to take the opportunity to share the feedback with them and make for a more inclusive

and accessible experience for us in a blindness community.

So once it rolls out and more generally for everyone, it works as we expect.

Welcome to Blind Abilities.

I'm Jeff Thompson.

Returning to the studio is Kevin Chao, and he's going to be talking about Zooks, which

is autonomous car, technically it's its own thing.

It's brand new.

Kevin, welcome to Blind Abilities.

Thank you, Jeffrey.

Happy to be here.

I'd like to talk about autonomous vehicles, specifically Zooks, as well as the ones

I've experienced.

Yeah, you've experienced a lot of autonomous vehicles out there in California.

Yes, I've tried some of the first early ones.

I was the early adopter of the Waymo, as well as the Tesla Robotaxi, and recently got

access to Zooks within this past week.

When you talk about access, I mean, you were telling me earlier, you've taken probably

40 Waymels.

Yes.

So with some of these, both the Waymo and Zooks, I was able to get on to like a waiting list

and get early access before it was available.

It's like general availability to the public.

So for example, with Zooks, I've originally requested access back in November of last

year.

Three months later, I got access to Zooks, and then the first day requested one ride, and

then went back a couple days later on a Saturday, and went with a few other friends, and went

on seven different Zooks.

Tell me about your thoughts about Waymo versus Zooks.

So of the three I've experienced, I would say in terms of voiceover accessibility, and

for a blind person, I would say Waymo has the best comprehensive app accessibility followed

by, it would be a Tesla Robotaxi, and then Zooks being third, but also Zooks is newer, and

they probably haven't fully made it inclusive or accessible or considered as blind people's

but I've been sharing them lots of feedback after each ride, and talking to their phone

support, and found a couple of their email addresses and forms, and have sent them quite

a bit of feedback.

Yeah, you sent me a copy of your feedback, so that's quite the experience, quite the

disappointment, I believe.

Yeah, but I mean, everything has to start somewhere, but it does have a promise in potential.

I think the thing that particularly excites me about Zooks is that it was designed and

built from the ground to truly be a autonomous vehicle, and that there are no external

wheels or pedals, and the front seats face the back.

So it's more from the technology perspective, and hopefully future autonomous vehicles

will have similar type designs.

So it's more like a pod or something from the carnival, huh?

Yeah, they kind of describe it as a shuttle or pod, and it's interesting.

The vibe you have when it approaches, the sound it makes, as well as the door sliding

open, and they're being like stars in the ceiling kind of gives you this really sci-fi,

space age type feeling.

Oh, really?

Wow.

How did it ride?

Overall, it was pretty smooth and comfortable, it was a nice ride.

Yeah, when I'm in a Tesla, I just a typical Tesla car.

I notice that it's a heavier car because of the batteries.

It rides a little different than a typical car, just a little bit.

I'm just wondering since this is a ground up, and this is a first of its kind, I was just

curious if it rode just like a car.

For the most part, yes, I guess the unique thing is that you do have the option of sitting

facing towards the back.

So that's a bit different.

Typically, don't have that opportunity or experience in a typical car.

Yeah.

Kevin, I know you said, this is early on, and you expect to find some issues surrounding

accessibility and the technology.

But can you tell us a little bit about what the experience was like and where were the

shortcomings?

So a couple from their app perspective, and since it is a limited, both in that you

have to join a wait list and be general, they don't have a full rollout.

And then it's also limited in, let's say San Francisco, it's not, you can't request

it anywhere and everywhere within the city.

They have, it's geofint, so there's a prompt or they have you look at a visual map and

it's a shoe to specify a pickup or be within the pickup zone of the highlight area of

the map.

And then you can only take it within the highlight area of the map.

So that's probably the biggest start there in that the highlight area of the map doesn't

read with voiceover.

But if you happen to, what I had to do was be with the sighted person to like, hey, can

you look at the map and see where we can go to request this thing?

And once you got to the area, then you have the second challenge of also having to ask

a sighted person like, can you also look at the map to see where we can go?

But once you get past those things, then when you're in the actual vehicle, you can, they

have these touch screens at each of the seats.

So there's four touch screens in total in the vehicle, I believe.

And you have to use these inbuilt touch screens to, once you're in the vehicle, to close

the doors, to start the vehicle, to do control the music and climate.

And these touch screens, at least I'm not aware of there being a screen reader accessibility.

And it'll be better if these controls were available in the app so we can use it with voice

over or if you're on Android or talk back.

Yeah, so really that resulted in me having to be with the sighted person in the vehicle

to ask them, hey, can you see the touch screen and close the doors, start the car and set

the music and set the temperature, which removes that feeling of independence, empowerment

and, I mean, autonomy in an autonomous vehicle.

Now, Zooks is developed by Amazon, and this is their first forte into autonomous vehicle.

I believe so.

Get ready for their delivery trucks, huh?

The experience that you have with the Waymo, what kind of experience is that?

The Waymo's phenomenal.

Everything from their app, you can control everything from it.

There's a couple of features I like and protect where you can basically request it anywhere

within any of the cities it's available in, whether it be San Francisco, where I live here.

And there's a fire feature so you can find the pickup spot and it'll tell you both direction

and distance, let's say 200 feet ahead of you and then you walk, you'll say 50 feet

to right or that you're here, and also sometimes provides a haptic feedback when the vehicle

is nearby.

You can have it honk or play a melody so you can locate it audibly.

And then as you approach the vehicle, it connects to your Bluetooth, so it's able to

automatically open the door.

So with Waymo, the door handles are flush when locked and then it slides out towards you.

So you're able to hold the door open and then once you're in the vehicle, there's

a start button in the app that you can tap and then all the music and the climate controls

you're able to control those things in the app as well.

And they also have a accessibility setting that allows you to have detailed audio descriptions.

So it will inform you of where the different controls are within the vehicle as well as

different major things that are happening as you're driving, whether it be what streets

or that you're at a red light or different major points of interest to be aware of as you're

going along.

So yeah, Waymo's definitely got a lot more inclusion and accessibility and feedback and they've

said a high bar and so the standard for this type of experience, I believe.

Well, like you started out by saying that this is the first testing that Zooks is doing,

so it's a start.

Yes.

Well, I'm glad that you're able to give the feedback.

He gave a long letter there that first started out, I am blind, blah, blah, blah, and

they went on and talked about your whole experience with it and I just really liked that you're

doing that and you understand that it takes a while to get things right.

Yes.

And there's one that's kind of in between that people may not be as familiar with.

There's the Tesla Rubble Taxi that's available in the greater Bay Area outside of San Francisco

and also Austin, so I've been taking that a bit more since

November.

I prefer that over lift or Uber really.

Yeah.

You're always guaranteed what type of vehicle you're going to get.

It's also price more competitively compared to Uber lift.

Sometimes I've found the fair to be could be half or third of the price sometimes.

Wow.

Amazing when you don't have to pay a driver, huh?

Well, so the interesting thing is they still have somebody in the driver seat for supervision

or safety purposes.

Oh, with the Tesla.

Yeah.

And technically, the vast majority of time, they're not operating and driving the vehicle.

The Tesla Rubble Taxi has a similar experience to the Waymo in that you're able to find

the vehicle using the app and it'll tell you the direction and distance to it.

You can also have the car honked by pressing the honk button app so you're able to locate

arguably also press the start button in the app, which are all great.

You can also change the temperature, the thing I haven't quite figured out and I think

it might be more of an accessibility issue is be able to pick the music I want to play

in the car.

I can change the volume, yeah, but aside from the music thing, I can do about everything

else in the app, which I'm pretty happy with.

Since you're an early adopter to the Waymo, have you seen these changes come about the

accessibility?

Like compared to your first ride to your 40th ride?

Yes.

The detailed audio description has been added in the meantime.

Be able to control the climate, became available in the app, yeah, they've also maintained

their level of accessibility and improved different aspects and more people have been able

to experience another city, so they've been expanding too, which has been great.

For example, I was at the Blind Traveler Summit in November in Austin and the interesting

thing there is they are using the Uber app and there's an option to prefer autonomous

vehicles, so you're actually not using the Waymo app in certain cities like Austin.

I think there are maybe others that are doing this as well, where you have to request it

through Uber and not use the Waymo app and there you don't have some of these accessibility

options like finding the vehicle, making the car honk and the detailed audio descriptions

and you're not guaranteed a Waymo either, you might get one.

So tell me about the ride, when you're in the car, can you adjust the seat, can you move

it forward, move it back, plumbar or anything like that?

For which one, Zooks or any of them?

I've never been in autonomous vehicle.

So for Zooks, no, the seats are fixed.

Yes, there's no option of like lowering, raising it, just incline, decline, or Waymo

and the Tesla Robotaxi.

If you're in the front passenger seat, you can do all those adjustments, but if you're

in the rear seat, like traditional cars, you can't, it's interesting.

So when you get feedback to Zooks, have you had any responses?

Not quite yet, but it's only been a couple of days.

Ah, yeah.

Well, I mean, I've gotten the automated response.

Thank you for your feedback.

We're looking to it is valuable and if there's more send us.

And then I guess like the phones support, they're like, oh, these are all great things.

We'll pass them along type of thing and they, yeah, these, definitely, these things.

We do need to make sure it works for blind people and it's accessible.

So at least I've been provided those type of responses, but in terms of something more

meaningful or actionable, hopefully with time.

Yeah.

I mean, just like from rides one to ride 40, you saw the improvements and now we have two

rides.

Eight with Zooks.

No.

I did one on the first day I got it, which was last Thursday and then I did seven on Saturday.

Oh, wow.

Well, your persistence, I mean, you've been beta testing products ever since I've known

you and your persistence, your detailed feedback that you give them.

It's only going to help the blindness community.

That's the goal.

That's the objective.

Realize that I have the unique opportunity to be here in the barrier where a lot of

these things start and also have the technical and kind of user experience.

So really want to take the opportunity to share the feedback with them and make for a more

inclusive and accessible experience for us in the blindness community.

So once it rolls out and more generally for everyone, it works as we expect.

Yeah.

Like your persistence, almost your tenacity.

But your understanding of the process of beta testing and you have to give it time to

let them take it in, decide what they're going to do and move forward with it.

So it takes someone like you to be doing this.

So I'm certainly glad that you're on top of it and I've got eight rides in those and forty

rides on the others and Tesla.

So good job, Kevin.

Yeah.

I think I've been done probably at least a dozen, maybe 20 rides or so on Robotaxi.

Tesla.

Well, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the blind abilities and talking about

Zooks, Waymo, Robotaxi from Tesla and keep up the great work because of people like

you that are actually going to make a difference in how these companies make changes or develop

their products.

So it is best for everybody, especially the blind and visually impaired.

Yes.

I'm honored and privileged to bring this to the blind abilities audience first and thank

you, Jeff, for giving me the opportunity.

Always a great time talking to Kevin Chao, learning about the latest and the greatest.

And once again, thanks, Kevin, for what you're doing for the blindness community.

For more podcasts with the Blindness Perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabillies.com.

And if you want to leave some feedback, give us some suggestions, give us a call at 612-367-6093.

We'd love to hear from you.

I want to thank you for listening and until next time, bye-bye.

What we see through each other's child's eyes, we can then get into the gap between the limited

expectations and the reality of blinded blinds and the realities of blinded blind abilities.