Wow.
Yesterday it seemed that most people on HN felt level 4 self driving on public roads was at least 5 years away.
Today that estimate needs to be revised. Seems the future is coming faster than we thought.
Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
391–400 of 634 posts
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#392What happens if these cars get in a situation where there is no legal way to move? For instance, the other day I was driving down the street and it was closed because of a Farmers market. Will they just sit there for hours? In gridlock, there is often no way to move without "blocking the box."
Everybody else is suggesting remote human intervention from an operations center, but those would likely suffer from hold times and dead zones.
What if, as an additional option, a touchscreen in the car highlighted the car's planned route, and the humans inside could drag the line to reroute, and/or add waypoints to the route? This would get around most farmer's markets and road closures. And/or they could tap to indicate a semi-permanent obstruction, and the car would do the rerouting.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still think that proper self-driving cars are such a paradigm shift that predictions of how it will work are still up in the air. For example, right now I live on the west coast and my parents live on the east coast. 4 kids, Minimum of 40 hour drive or $3500 flight. Here's one tiny example: I can work remotely for a few weeks and my boss doesn't mind. The kids sleep for 8+ hours at night. Friday, Saturday, Sunday,…
Camper-van, pick-me up at the office (London) on Friday evening, by Saturday morning we in the highlands of Scotland. It sounds silly - but the more automation the more I want to spend within my fictional camper-van. Soccer away match - no problem. Trip to the beach again, overnight. It is like an sleeper train - only more comfortable and spacious, as it would be my families camper-van.
>Camper-van, pick-me up at the office (London) on Friday evening, by Saturday morning we in the highlands of Scotland.
I just want to point out that there is a pretty decent sleeper train that departs from the center of London and will have you wave up in the center of Glasgow. You'll have a full-size bed with sink, toilet etc. and a dining car and a bar if you want to avail yourself. Tickets are pretty cheap too.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the comparison is as apt as, for instance, a 1st class intercontinental seat on Singapore airlines. https://www.singaporeair.com/saar5/images/navigation/flying-...
Road travel is very rarely smoother than air travel though. I've actually been to Singapore on BA's lie flat beds, as well as bus seats that weren't far off in basic comfort, and train beds which were much more comfortable and generally smoother than both yet remain a very niche form of budget transport. Taking an order of magnitude longer than air travel means the overland options are still rarely a better fit (the…
I've taken sleeper train services before from Scotland to London. It's cheaper than a hotel and the service leaves at 11pm and arrives at 7am. You get a room with a real bed (and lockable door, sink, toilet, etc.) and a pretty decent restaurant and bar to avail yourself of. You also get to leave from the city center and arrive in the city center, without messing around with security and arriving 1-2 hours before the flight.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are absolutely right, and this is not widely understood yet. I expect people to live farther from work and spend more time in cars and in traffic. On the other hand, need for parking will plummet and that should free up a bunch of space in cities, increasing density. I wonder if there is money to be made betting on this in the markets? Which companies will benefit, or lose, from these shifts?
that’s very true. i read somewhere that something crazy like 30% of traffic in city areas are people looking for car parking. don’t have a source on it, but the parking situation definitely shouldn’t be ignored, at least as far as the most built up/problematic areas are concerned
> i read somewhere that something crazy like 30% of traffic in city areas are people looking for car parking.
Without a source, this is just a made-up statistic, i.e., worthless.
Here's a source for you, though [1].
> Sixteen studies of cruising behavior were conducted between 1927 and 2001 in the central business districts of eleven cities on four continents (see Figure 1). ... About thirty percent of the cars in the traffic flow were cruising for parking. The data varied widely around these averages, however; on some uncrowded streets no cars were cruising, while on some congested streets most of the cars were cruising. Cities have changed since these observations were made, and the data are selective because researchers study cruising only where they expect to find it.
[1] "Cruising for parking" by Donald Shoup http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn't the dollars, but the time. This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better. The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides, the more people will drive (self driving or otherwise). If road infrastructure is the same, that necessarily means a much higher density of cars…
Road Traffic won't worsen as you mentioned, let me explain why ? Increased capacity utilization. I assume, you are a technical person. If you look back at year 2000, In a typical IT company there is a server Box for each category. A Database server box , a WebServer Box ( physical machines ) etc.. very few people used viruvalization etc.. Physical Machines capacity utilization is around 15% . Come to 2017, with Amazo…
OP's probably referring to induced demand [0], or something similar to Braess's paradox [1].
But I see your point though. If people are incentivized to share a car then that might reduce the load.
That said, my suspicion is, once you take the driver out of the equation, you can do so much more than just ferrying people. E.g courier/shipping services, or mobile food stalls (food truck that sells food while moving on the highway, once engineers figure out how to safely and autonomously speed match two cars), etc. The induced demand may be greater than the savings from ride-sharing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self driving (and taxis) cars can reduce traffic, because commuters can combine them with mass transit (e.g. trains). If a commuter travels more than 2 legs in a day, it's very likely that mass transit will not cover one of the legs and he will take his car.
why would people do that when they don't already carpool or take a bus?
Same reason people who didn't take taxis take Uber.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Passenger rail in the United States probably doesn’t have the same economics as the other places you’re thinking of. I recently drove across part of the country, and it is shocking how much space there is with absolutely nothing there. There is a 100 mile stretch of I-80 without cell service or signs of habitation. If you live in a city, it’s easy to forget that the United States is much, much, bigger than Europe or…
> If you live in a city, it’s easy to forget that the United States is much, much, bigger than Europe or Japan. I assume you mean “less densely populated” (bigger, per capita) rather than actually bigger; it's actually smaller, not bigger, than Europe.
True, the continent of Europe (10.2 million km^2) is larger than the United States (9.8 million km^2), but the context suggests wskinner meant a comparable geopolitical entity such as the EU.
The US covers roughly twice as much area as the EU (4.5 million km^2), which includes most of the countries we're talking about. If we want to add the rest of continental Europe (mainly western Russia), we might also add the rest of continental North America (mainly Canada).
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#399If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the…
> If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition ... then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats...I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly
Yes, Waymo may capture 100% of the self-driving tech market for a few years, but I don't see it having a sustainable advantage. As soon as another company develops self-driving technology that meets safety standards it can undercut Waymo and capture a significant market share. In 10 years self driving tech will be a commodity product - any car manufacturer/ride hailing company will be able to choose between a half-dozen offerings.
But car manucturers are still in for long-term pain because their product is also becoming a commodity: nobody cares about the colour or horsepower of the taxi they take to work. Electrification and ride sharing may also significantly reduce the demand for new vehicles.
Ride-hailing companies like Uber are also going to feel their share of pain, but only until they can develop or buy self-driving technology. Until then they can just pay a few billion dollars to subsidize their human drivers.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#400Lyft and Uber either beats the big tech or big auto to self driving tech... or they are dead. I'm putting my money on the latter.