SF Examiner – SF nonprofit grateful for Waymo partnership — but there’s a catch
Editors note: this is clearly just a cynical marketing ploy on the part of Waymo. If they actually wanted to help they should simply contribute money directly to the charity so that it could be used efficiently. Instead, Waymo is using their incredibly expensive vehicles plus their own highly paid drivers. The charity could do much better with direct financial donations.
See original article by Greg Wong at SF Examiner
In addition to driving people around the city and entertaining tourists, Waymo vehicles have taken on a charitable role over the last year, delivering groceries to food-insecure adults.
But there’s a catch: The self-driving cars haven’t actually been driving themselves.
Instead, as part of a partnership between the Alphabet-backed autonomous vehicle company and OpenHouse SF, Waymo employees have been driving the cars. Since July of last year, they’ve regularly taken the nonprofit’s volunteers and the food they’re delivering from the SF Marin Food Bank to the LGBTQ+ seniors OpenHouse assists.
Waymo pays its drivers for their time, but it has been providing the service to OpenHouse SF for free. That’s allowed the nonprofit to expand its service and reach more people, while saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars, OpenHouse officials said.
The partnership, which also offers free rides for OpenHouse members and volunteers inside Waymo’s cars that actually are in self-driving mode, came at a critical time for the nonprofit. The organization has been grappling with many of the same issues that have plagued other nonprofits nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, including staffing shortages and increasing demand for its services.
OpenHouse’s team-up with Waymo has made a “huge difference” for the longtime Hayes Valley-based charity, said Kathleen Sullivan, OpenHouse’s executive director.
The partnership with OpenHouse isn’t the first time Waymo has deployed its vehicles for charity. It has a program in Phoenix where its robotaxis drive freshly cleaned laundry to unhoused people in the city. In that case, the cars make their deliveries autonomously, with no humans behind the wheel.
The difference is those cars only make one stop after picking up the laundry — to drop it off. The Waymo cars that make deliveries for OpenHouse can make as many as 10 stops along their delivery routes, with the nonprofit’s volunteers getting out to make wellness checks of variable durations along the way.
Waymo’s were designed to go from point A to point B, Anjelica Price-Rocha, a company spokeswoman. Adding in the capability to make multiple delivery stops along a route would require additional programming, she said. At this point, it’s easier to accomplish that with a driver behind the wheel.
The company doesn’t currently have plans to deliver OpenHouse meals autonomously, Price-Rocha said.
“We’re proud to provide the vehicles, and we want to just make sure that we’re able to just do that the best possible for the community, because that’s what they deserve,” said Waymo spokeswoman Rachel Kamen.
Bryant Walker Smith, an engineering professor at the University of South Carolina, whose research focuses on autonomous vehicles, said it does not surprise him there’s a driver inside the Waymo vehicles used to make deliveries for OpenHouse SF. The company’s first priority for the partnership is that it offers a ”positive story” to the public about the company and its technology.
See original article by Greg Wong at SF Examiner
