Does India have a Driverless Taxi service? Read more
Claim
Rating
Explanation
In the viral 4-minute 50-second video we see an old age woman introducing us to a driverless taxi that she takes with her son. Her son seems to be filming the whole video while she explains how is traveling without a driver in a taxi.
Driverless taxi service started first time in world in Chennai started yesterday. 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/pd6mKGIWtE
— Mindhack.diva (@MindhackD) October 21, 2023
Since the old woman speaks in Tamil, this video is shared by social media users claiming that it is from Chennai. Similar posts can be seen here and here. Come, let’s check this interesting claim.
What’s the truth?
We started our research with all the keyframes from the viral video and we found out that the original video is from America. Also, we took the hint from the video when we saw the driver’s seat on the left side because in India driver’s seat is on the right side. This proves that the video is not from Chennai or even from India. We also located the original video uploaded on a YouTube channel namely, ‘ASK INFORMATION’ on 8 September 2023, captioned as “Driverless Taxi in the USA.”
If this was in India, by this time it would have been all over the news now but when we searched for reports using relevant keywords we didn’t find any such articles or information. This proves that this video is not from India.
We also noticed the driverless car had been printed with the application name “Waymo” and searched the internet and got another video uploaded by a journalist from Los Angeles, California on his X account on 11 October 2023. The post is captioned as, ‘THIS AM: we hopped inside a Waymo ride for the first time as the driverless taxi company rolls into LA! Join us on KTLA for the details and find out where you can sign up for free.’
Also, we checked the app named ‘Waymo’on X which shows that it is based on Mountain View, California. This clearly proves that the video is from California and not from India. In the bio, they have clearly mentioned ‘Creating a new way forward with Waymo One in #PHX, #SF, #LA, & #AT.’ This means the ride has so far started in Phoenix(Arizona), San Fransisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas. All this evidence clearly proves that the video is from the USA and not from India.
While intensifying our research we also got another video from an X account uploaded on 6 July 2023. The post is shared with a 55-second video stating that it is from Wuhan, China.
Thus, this confirms that the driverless taxi service is started around the world but not in India now.
Conclusion:
To sum up we conclude that the viral video shared with claims stating that the driverless taxi is from Chennai, India is completely false. In reality, it’s from the USA.
