Robotaxi Passenger Report: Research & Survey Findings
The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed. (William Ford Gibson)
Imagine a city where autonomous vehicle technologies are already a familiar part of everyday life. Residents take driverless taxis to work and school, and takeout meals arrive by delivery bot. This may sound like fantasy, but such a city does in fact exist — Innopolis, in central Russia, where the future is now.
Three years ago, on August 28, 2018, the first driverless-taxi service in Europe was launched in Innopolis. From day one, passengers were able to experience the full range of sensations that come with riding in a self-driving taxi — without a driver behind the wheel. And delivery bots joined them in 2020.
City officials conducted a survey among 358 residents who use driverless taxis in their day-to-day lives. We analyzed their responses together to discover the most popular scenarios and to understand users’ attitudes to the technology and their further expectations. We hope that this research will provide a glimpse into the future and will prepare big city dwellers for the arrival of driverless taxis in their lives.
Let’s start with some numbers
To date, passengers have completed more than 22,000 rides in self-driving taxis. More than 3,000 people have signed up for the service, and even more new users are signing up every year. The service itself is also growing: since its launch, the fleet of robotaxis has increased, more pickup and drop-off points for passengers have been added, and the working hours have expanded: the taxis now operate every day from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The frequency of orders depends on numerous factors, such as the day of the week and the weather. In summer, for example, an average of 40–50 trips are made per day; in winter the number almost doubles, to 70–80 trips. Yandex’s driverless taxis operate in just about any type of weather, so city residents use the opportunity to get a comfortable ride to their destination even in bad weather.
How it works
Users can order a driverless taxi using the Yandex Go app. The waiting time for a car is about four minutes on average. There are pickup and drop-off points at most of the city’s main attractions: the Technopark, the university, residential areas, the stadium, the farmers’ market, etc.
Fifty-three percent of the passengers surveyed use a driverless taxi regularly — at least several times a month. Some of the most frequently cited reasons for using self-driving taxis are to commute to and from work or school, to go to the gym or to go shopping. More than half of respondents also use driverless taxis to take visiting friends and family for a ride. Overall, 97% of the respondents were ready to recommend that their friends use a driverless taxi if they ever found themselves in Innopolis.
One of the most surprising facts that we discovered from the survey was the time it took a passenger to get used to the lack of a driver. Ninety-three percent of passengers responded that it took them less than five minutes. There were those who needed more than one ride, and there were even those who still aren’t used to it, but they accounted for only 4% and 3% of respondents, respectively.
We didn’t see a connection between the age of the passengers surveyed and the time it took them to get used to the lack of a driver behind the wheel. There was a similar distribution of answers in the different age groups.
Reviews and impressions
Among the advantages of driverless taxis, passengers most often noted safety. They also liked how careful the cars drove and the fact that they treated other road users with respect. A large number of users are also interested in following the technology as it develops and improves.
When asked what they would like to see added, passengers said they would like to increase the number of cars and stops, and also to be allowed to take their children with them. Some passengers are waiting for the transition to completely driverless operations, as well as for a time when there will be nothing but driverless vehicles in the city.
Expectations
Innopolis is a relatively small city with not much traffic, which is precisely why the city was chosen to pilot robo-taxis. But the technology has seen considerable advances in three years. During this time, our driverless vehicles managed to cover nearly 15 million kilometers along the roads of Moscow, Tel Aviv and Ann Arbor, MI. Moreover, there is a lot to learn even in a city like Innopolis. Since there is little traffic here, pedestrians don’t always use crosswalks to cross the street; drivers are also not always in strict compliance with traffic rules. And winters here can see a lot of snowfall.
As technology developers, we are constantly analyzing progress and using hundreds of different metrics to evaluate the technology. From there, we make plans and decisions about further deployments. But it was interesting for us to look at this through the eyes of those who use autonomous vehicles on a regular basis. To find out how they rate the technology. We asked passengers to rate the technology’s readiness for use beyond Innopolis.
The question we asked passengers was, When do you think it will be possible to use driverless taxis during rush hour in the center of a metropolis? More than 50% of passengers said that, within two to five years, the technology would reach a level where it could handle the complex traffic of a big city safely and efficiently.
We are grateful to the participants for their responses. This survey has allowed us to look at the product from a user’s point of view and we have made many useful and interesting discoveries. We will definitely conduct a similar survey after we launch self-driving taxis in Moscow later this year, and we will see if rob-taxi passengers in the big city have anything new to tell us.
