I’m writing this column in the back of a robotaxi. Last year I clocked up 35 hours in a Waymo, covering 447 autonomous miles over 89 trips. Meanwhile, over in Austin, Texas, Tesla’s nascent robotaxi service just gave its first fully autonomous rides to ordinary passengers. Waymo already operates in six American cities and last spring hit a milestone of a million fully autonomous rides every month. Yet a handful of autonomous Teslas, in a single city, is being heralded—very prematurely—as a defining moment for autonomous cars.