UC Irvine

On November 4th, 2019, in cooperation with Pony.ai and VIA, Hyundai launched in Irvine, California, BotRide, an innovative pilot program and robotaxi service. With BotRide, participants could hail a ride in an autonomous vehicle to various destinations in Irvine for free through a mobile application. After the program ended, a survey was sent in February 2020 to BotRide participants to collect socioeconomic data and information about user experience. BotRide is unique, since, in addition to having ridehailing and ridesharing elements, it is a robotaxi service. As robotaxis are just emerging, robotaxi research is still in its infancy, so my thesis is one of the first studies to contribute to the robotaxi literature. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and investigate how various socioeconomic characteristics, such as occupation, gender, or ethnicity, may influence a user’s likelihood to use Hyundai’s BotRide service. To achieve this goal, I analyzed the February 2020 survey data provided by Hyundai and estimated a binary logit model (to characterize BotRide users) and a multinomial logit model (to contrast light and heavy BotRide users) using Stata. Results indicate that household income, the convenience or functionality of using BotRide, working fulltime in Irvine, or being an Irvine resident may reduce the likelihood of using BotRide. In contrast, having some level of familiarity with and knowledge about autonomous vehicles increases the likelihood of using BotRide. Hence, Hyundai may consider targeting a certain group of users, encouraging ridership by providing more information on BotRide itself, and exploring ways to make BotRide a more convenient and functional option for users.