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Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

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Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#91

Post by harpastum »

tyingq wrote: post #83

Is Waymo clear about what the end goal is? I can't tell if they plan to launch an Uber like service, or a direct-to-consumer lease type service, or just to be suppliers (whole vehicles, components like lidar, software) to companies like Uber. Or maybe they are leaving all of that undecided for now? I'm not sure this rider trial thing strongly signals any of them. You would want real world end-customer experiences reg…

I think they're still early enough in the process that they want to leave their options open. I'm sure they're going to be capturing a lot of information about how the riders, community, and press handle this first step — and use that to determine where they want to go from there.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#92

Post by aquadrop »

monkmartinez wrote: post #37
abvdasker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transportation in general will become much cheaper. Because driverless cars will get into far fewer accidents than humans the cost of insuring them will be a fraction of what it costs to insure a human driver today. And when transportation gets cheaper basically every product that needs to be moved gets cheaper (assuming the companies using this technology don't just pocket the savings). Also, basically drivers of al…

How are you so sure driverless cars will get into less accidents? Furthermore, how is this technology going to be make everything less expensive. Please explain. For the record, I think this technology will make the prices for these vehicles prohibitively expensive for the mass market.

> How are you so sure driverless cars will get into less accidents

Same reason robots in manufacturing are better than humans. They don't have bad mood, they don't have bad day, they don't need to speak on the phone while driving, they don't drink etc.

> how is this technology going to be make everything less expensive

Because in Europe/USA most part of the cost in low-weight vehicle transportation is salary of the driver. Also self driving cars will be less costly to maintain (less accidents, better monitoring), if big fleet operated by companies they also have benefit of large scale etc

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#93

Post by ghaff »

gizmo385 wrote: post #55
monkmartinez wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the entire piece... People think the autonomous car is going to solve a lot of the current problems; Accidents, Parking, Congestion. It kind of makes me giggle a bit, as I ponder what may happen. That is, the conclusions drawn from "self-driving" vehicles are possibly way over cooked. The certification process for these cars are going to be very, very expensive. Think about the software involved for the…

> What people on the coasts forget about is, really, the rest of the country. The people that actually enjoy driving, where parking isn't a problem Doesn't something like 80% of the US live in urban areas? And hasn't that number been continuously increasing for decades. People in the cities enjoy driving too, hell I love driving when their isn't any traffic. But I'd give it up in a heartbeat if it meant less needless…

>Doesn't something like 80% of the US live in urban areas?

Technically speaking by US Census classifications but the definition of urban is very broad. You basically need a population of over 2500 to be in an urban cluster.

So where I live is "urban" and between myself and two neighbors, we're on about 70 acres of land.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#94

Post by djsumdog »

tyingq wrote: post #83

Is Waymo clear about what the end goal is? I can't tell if they plan to launch an Uber like service, or a direct-to-consumer lease type service, or just to be suppliers (whole vehicles, components like lidar, software) to companies like Uber. Or maybe they are leaving all of that undecided for now? I'm not sure this rider trial thing strongly signals any of them. You would want real world end-customer experiences reg…

I wonder this about autonomous cars in general from any company. They're cool tech and in Europe, they can really help solve several last leg problems and cut down on car ownership (I really don't think people should be able to own self driving cars. They really need airplane style maintenance for sensors and companies need to work together so all fleets have the latest safety and security updates).

However I don't really like hearing about tax money going into these projects. At least in America, self driving cars won't solve gridlock. It will be 15 ~ 30 years before we can have autonomous car only highways, and even then, self driving cars don't even touch the capacity of a real train based mass transit network. Singapore has had self driving trains for years (it's a much easier problem) and London is automating more of their lines.

Self driving cars are cool tech, but they're not going to solve grid lock or many of the major transport problems we face today:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol...

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#95

Post by aquadrop »

aquadrop wrote: post #47
foolfoolz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

googles cars have gotten in a few fender benders and side swipes people have died using teslas autopilot

There's a lot more tesla cars than google cars. And I don't think there was a single death directly because of autopilot (not 100% sure though). Also, autopilot is safer, so it actually _saved_ lives.

If downvoters don't believe autopilot is safer, here's article about NHTSA report: http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-stati...

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#96

Post by dmix »

greglindahl wrote: post #60
maxfurman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably. Tesla has not done a good job educating their customers on the limits of their "Autopilot" system, which has led to at least one preventable death. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_dea...

Where's the proof that it was a driver education problem? This argument gets rehashed every month or so here on HN.

Not to mention basing this on a single data point where a fatality occurred. How about the tens of thousands of other drives vs standard? That would at least be statistically relevant.

Even though what they released isn't a self-driving car but a glorified cruise control. I personally don't really see how that is reckless at all.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#97

Post by ryandrake »

Asooka wrote: post #65
kyrra wrote: post #2

TLDR: * People can apply to use/borrow a Waymo vehicle (RX450 or Pacifica) for some period of time. * "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times." * Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being. * You apply here: https://waymo.com/apply/ * Waymo will be adding 500 more of the Pacifica minivans for this program.

Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed to not owning cars any more.

Unfortunately, the concept of something being fully yours seems to be what's going away. So much of what we "buy" now is locked down by the manufacturer to the point where you cannot even hope to modify or repair it. Automobiles, in particular are getting less and less modifiable every generation. More and more electronic gadgets in the home are locked into only running manufacturer-selected software. Everything is network-tethered to the manufacturer, who ultimately controls whether/how their products operate. Sad times.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#98

Post by [deleted] »

aianus wrote: post #54
pythonaut_16 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this. While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure their cars are actually safe.

Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla for shipping something.

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#99

Post by scarmig »

jacquesm wrote: post #85
scarmig wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At fault" is one relevant metric, but not the only one. An autonomous vehicle should at least meet, and ideally surpass, human-driven ones in avoiding accidents for which they're not at fault as well. I'd be curious to know if Waymo vehicles experience more, less, or the same number of not-at-fault accidents per mile driven as human-driven ones.

That's a tricky one. Avoiding an accident for which you are not at fault could easily cause an accident for which you are at fault. Human drivers have a pretty bad record with that particular situation. Also, there are some network effects at play here, the higher the percentage of self driving cars the more rare that situation should become.

I agree that there's a tricky calculus involved in some scenarios, but I think there's a much wider domain of not-at-fault scenarios where autonomous vehicles should be able to surpass humans unambiguously. Example: an autonomous car being tailgated by a human-driven car, with a stop sign or light up ahead. Different braking patterns have different likelihoods of causing an accident.

Autonomous cars really have to be able to handle these scenarios at least as good as, and ideally better than, humans: there's not a complicated split-second balancing act to worry about.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#100

Post by ryandrake »

scarmig wrote: post #66
trapperkeeper79 wrote: post #16

Wish they deployed this in Mountain View. I see like 20 of these a day going around aimlessly. I'd sign up as a customer!

Too easy for a competitor to hop on and get casual intel, maybe?

Competitors that don't know where Phoenix, AZ is, I suppose.
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