When the lease on my car expired in 2017, I made the bold decision to turn it in without getting a new one. I was living in Seattle at the time, which has reliable bus routes and is small enough that nearly all my car rides were 20 minutes or less. It felt like the perfect setting to try relying on a combination of public transit, Uber, and my bike.
The math was compelling. I would save a ton of money! There would be no upfront cost to buy the car, or ongoing expenses for gas, insurance, parking, and maintenance. For longer trips into the mountains for a hike, I could carpool with friends. Even if I had to rent a car occasionally, it would still be cheaper than owning one.
I lasted less than six months, but eight years later, it might be more feasible given Uber’s latest feature rollouts. The company has been working on reducing personal car ownership, Wendy Lee, Uber’s director of autonomous mobility and delivery products, told me at its 2025 global product event today. Uber announced a suite of pretty compelling products, including cheaper rides for common routes and the country’s first shared, autonomous ride service.
Wendy Lee, Uber’s director of autonomous mobility and delivery products (Credit: Emily Forlini/PCMag)
“We believe there’s a future where we can make the roads safer, we can reduce traffic, we can reduce emissions, [and] it’s better for the environment,” Lee says. “I don’t think personal car ownership needs to be the way it’s been the past few decades. It can look different.”
In 2026, passengers in Los Angeles will be the first to see a new option in the Uber app: A self-driving, Woodstock-style electric Volkswagen ID.Buzz. It will transport groups of passengers, presumably at a lower price per person. If the rider’s requested route requires a road that is ineligible for the self-driving Volkswagen, it will not surface as an option in the app. This is how it works today when a rider calls a self-driving Waymo vehicle through the Uber app, Lee says.
Volkswagen ID.Buzz (Credit: Emily Forlini/PCMag)
The shared autonomous ride tech could complement other route-focused features Uber debuted at today’s event for traditional rides, such as the option for the rider to walk a short distance to a shared pickup point in exchange for savings.
It experimented with shared rides in 2018 via Uber Express Pool, but the pandemic killed that idea for a few years. The new Route Share option is aimed more at commuters, with rides available in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston, and Baltimore to start, with more cities to come. Uber says rides will be up to 50% cheaper than UberX.
Why My Experiment Failed
These features might have made my experiment even more cost-effective and solved the biggest issue that ultimately prompted me to pull the plug: The constant small talk.
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I thought I had no problem talking to strangers, but taking daily Uber rides exposed me to the same repetitive questions over and over again. “How’s your day? How long have you been working for Uber?” Quiet mode didn’t exist yet, so there was no escape.
I had to mentally prepare myself for the chit chat that would start as soon as my butt hit the seat. It became a burden and outweighed the occasional worthwhile exchange. I also grew tired of waiting for my rides, walking around to find them, and the inevitable cancellations.
Autonomous vehicles solve this issue by removing the driver. It’s an introvert’s dream, though there are drawbacks. Self-driving cars have frozen in areas with network overload, and don’t move if someone stands in their way, turning passengers into sitting ducks. There are also occasional accidents, and confusing new norms, like what to do if the car breaks a law. But in a perfect world, autonomous rides would’ve solved my biggest barrier to long-term, daily Uber use.
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Waymo’s nationwide rollout is waking people up to the joys of quiet, driverless rides. My friends in California take them regularly and love the peaceful rides. I’m starting to think quiet rides might be appreciated by introverts and extroverts alike, especially those who take them regularly.
A Precarious Public Experiment
Uber display at GO-GET 2025 (Credit: Emily Forlini/PCMag)
I do worry that society, and the tech industry, is in a honeymoon phase with self-driving cars, unable to see the full implications. From automating jobs and unclear federal safety standards to potentially billions of wasted investment dollars, it’s a precarious public experiment.
Uber sends mixed messages about whether it’s “getting rid” of drivers. At this week’s event, a movie theater-sized screen proclaimed, “The future is autonomous,” yet two spokespeople insisted to me that the idea is to increase the number of rides overall, for robots and humans alike. That’s probably equal parts media training and reality, at least in the short term.
“There are definitely things autonomous vehicles can’t do, like picking up at a private event or going long distances,” Lee says. “We’ll see what that looks like over time and how it develops.”
On a sentimental note, the relationship between Uber riders and drivers has become a cultural institution that can provide some much-needed social interaction. One driver even wrote a book about the interesting stories riders told him over his nine years on the job, Block Club Chicago reports. Ending that tradition gives even this Scrooge-like passenger a bit of a heart pang.
About Emily Forlini
Senior Reporter
