My First Waymo Ride: Robotaxi in Orlando

I run Tesla FSD pretty much every day, so a car driving itself is not new to me. Sitting in the back of one with nobody up front and no wheel I could grab if things went sideways? That was new. This was my first Waymo ride, my first robotaxi of any kind, and I took it in Orlando because Abby was in town for a conference and I finally had my excuse.

We had actually tried this before. Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving taxi, kept popping up on our Vegas trips, and it was never available, even for free rides. So when I realized Orlando was fully open, no waitlist, no approval, just download the app and register, I wasn’t going to pass it up. Tesla’s own Robotaxi service exists here too, but not in the part of town where we were staying. Waymo was the next best thing, and honestly it turned out to be the perfect introduction.

Booking my first Waymo ride

Setup was easy. Download the app, register, connect Apple Pay, and I even linked my YouTube Music account. I enabled Bluetooth so the car would unlock as it pulled up. The first ride to Icon Park ran about $14 for roughly three miles, which felt steep next to what I expected, though I’ve never actually taken an Uber here to compare.

The one hiccup was the pickup location. Everyone at the hotel swore it would pull up out front. The app said the back, near the Hertz rental area and the bus stops, and I assumed the map was glitching. It wasn’t. The app was right, the humans were wrong, and I should have just followed the screen. Lesson learned before I even got in the car.

What riding in the back of a Waymo feels like

The car was a Jaguar I-Pace, and I deliberately sat in the back so I couldn’t cheat and grab the wheel in a panic. It greeted me by name, walked me through the seatbelt reminder, and then just went. On a single-lane road it was doing 35, then confidently pushing 45 where the limit allowed. One slightly hard brake, one very late turn signal, but nothing that rattled me. If you already live in FSD, the leap is small. The difference is purely psychological: I have zero override here, and I had to make peace with that.

That comfort comes straight from experience. I trust Tesla’s system because I use it constantly, and I’ve watched it handle genuinely hard conditions, like the Cybertruck driving me through heavy rain on v14.1.7. Right now I’m at 73% FSD usage in the Model Y and 43% in the Cybertruck, the truck lower only because Abby drives it and uses it less. Sitting in a Waymo felt like the natural extension of all that, just without a Tesla badge on it.

The I-Pace itself was nice. Glass roof, perforated leather seats, and a Meridian sound system, which stung a little. My Gen 2 R1S traded Meridian for Elevation, and I still think that was a downgrade worth complaining about. Word is Waymo is phasing these Jaguars out for Hyundai Ioniq 5s, so I’m glad I got to ride the I-Pace while it’s still on the road.

Where Waymo can and can’t take you

Orlando still runs on a defined service area, so Waymo is not everywhere yet. It also stays off the highways, which means no airport runs. That’s the one trip I actually wanted, since it would have been a great way to leave town. I also tried mapping a route over to where Tesla’s Robotaxis operate, and the coverage just didn’t overlap with where I was.

Waymo's Orlando service area.

Tesla Robotaxi, just out of reach from where we stayed.

So this wasn’t a case of picking a favorite. It was a case of geography deciding for me. Waymo had the coverage where I needed it, Tesla didn’t, and that was the whole story.

I brought the boys along

Round two, I brought the boys. Their first robotaxi, my third of the day. One called it a Tesla, one just said “scared,” and one summed it up with a single word: “AI.” I reminded them we run FSD all the time, so this really shouldn’t faze anyone, and they mostly agreed.

The little moments are what sold me. It calmly waited out a bus blocking the road, taking its sweet time to decide but making the right call. On another drop-off it detected sprinklers hitting the pavement and rolled past them so we wouldn’t step out into the spray. Small stuff, but exactly the kind of judgment that builds trust. There are even reports that the support line routes to the Philippines, which as a Filipino I got a kick out of.

The verdict: five stars, no tipping

Two round trips in, my take is simple: it’s just like calling an Uber, except no driver and no tipping. The nerves lasted about thirty seconds. If you already trust FSD, a Waymo is barely a mental adjustment, and it’s a genuinely relaxing way to get around a city you don’t know. The price is the only thing I’d push back on, though I’ll chalk some of that up to paying off the R&D.

If Waymo made me this comfortable with nobody up front, I’m even more curious what Tesla’s Robotaxi will feel like once it reaches the areas I actually travel to. That’s the ride I want to take next.