Waymo Shows Driverless Car Rides, and They're Totally Wild

If you can’t wait to ride around in a driverless car, here is a sneak peek at what it’ll be like soon enough.

Waymo, the driverless car startup owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., released a video on its official YouTube channel showing footage of folks riding in its cars without a human safety driver.

In other words, the Waymo-programmed Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans were solely being steered by the company’s self-driving algorithm.

In the upbeat video, titled Early Rider Moments: “Is There No One Driving That Car?”, a music track accompanies the excited riders as they get on the road. These riders, which include a young lady busy on her phone, a couple and a mother and young boy, among others, had opted into Waymo’s Early Rider program.

The video proves that after the initial novelty of not having a driver wore off, most of the riders’ eagerness seemed to subside. A few yawns can be seen toward the end of the footage, with one rider even managing to sneak in a nap during his Waymo commute.

At SXSW this week, the company’s CEO John Krafcik revealed the Early Rider drew a whopping 20,000 in the Phoenix area.

If you happen to be an Arizona resident, you can get in on the driverless commute fun too. Waymo just expanded the Early Rider program and is currently accepting applications in other Arizona cities, including Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert. If selected, you’ll be able to Waymo your way to work, school or even fun activities, like say, brunch.

The new video comes on the heels of Waymo’s recent announcement that it passed its “fifth million self-driven mile” this month. The startup’s growth has been explosive over the past couple of years, as it climbed from one million driverless miles driven in June 2015 to its current five million. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before the mainstream gets a taste of what the Early Riders got to experience.