(originally published on Cheddar January 24, 2020: https://cheddar.com/media/yandex-robo-taxi-review-a-moscow-driver-in-las-vegas)
Think about your favorite person to drive with, or your least favorite person. Now think about sitting in the back of a car that can drive itself but like them — a software setting in an autonomous vehicle to drive a certain way.
What I’m describing is within the realm of possibility considering my recent ride in a Yandex self-driving car.
Yandex ($YNDX), considered the “Google of Russia,” sent two of their self-driving cars to Las Vegas for CES again this year.
My ride in early January wasn’t my first in a self-driving car — I spent a few days last year in Arizona exploring the Waymo One robo-taxi service — but this was my first without someone physically in the driver’s seat.
The Trip
During my ride an engineer sat in the passenger seat and Yulia Shveyko, Yandex Self-Driving’s head of PR, sat with me in the back.
The car drove itself out of the Hard Rock Hotel parking garage and around the Strip for 25 minutes. (That…
