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Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

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Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#441

Post by sdrothrock »

chrischen wrote: post #408

It'd be interesting to see how this compares in overall efficiency to properly implemented and comprehensive mass transit systems in a dense urban environment. The Tokyo metro alone (not including the JR trains, Tokyo Subway—a separate but compatible subway system, and other train transit systems which totals over 40 million daily users) handles 6.8 million passengers daily just in one city . https://en.wikipedia.org…

Toei[0] has been experimenting with it; the Nippori-Toneri line from Nippori is a driverless monorail. The trip is fairly normal albeit jerky.

Awkwardly enough, many of the stations do not have attendants either, so if you have a problem with the gate, you have to call back to Nippori and ask for help, which is a huge problem when you can't hear well enough...

[0] Toei (都営) is the Tokyo Metropolitan Government-operated rail system (mostly subways and buses), not to be confused with Tokyo Metro, which is a private rail system (mostly subways), or JR, which operates mostly above-ground trains.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#442

Post by FabHK »

LrnByTeach wrote: post #406
oh_teh_meows wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yes, the financial incentives for sharing the RIDE , coupled with Induced demand make Autonomous cars so cheap like $200/month for 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION, the adoption goes exponential at this point . I will give you one great example of 'Exponential adoption' happened in recent history of technology. In the year 1998, at the early days of Internet, we used have only WIRED Broadband Router. Everybody has a 100…

You can emphasize things by surrounding them with asterisks. No need for all CAPS.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#443

Post by wpietri »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #342
wpietri wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think Waymo is much better off selling shovels to prospectors than trying to mine all the gold themselves. A lot of people will try to get into the ridesharing business, some of them much better capitalized than Waymo.

Better capatilized than Waymo? Alphabet has over $100b cash with less than $4b debt and over 40% on shore. Only Apple has more with about $260b cash but over $100b debt and over 90% offshore so tax liability yet to be paid. What better capitalization are you speaking? Also realize Alphabet could also raise additional capital bpver easily. They are the only ones truly able to so level 4 and they are miles and miles ah…

Sorry, excellent point. For some reason I was thinking of Waymo as independent, even though I know that's not the case.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#444

Post by dheera »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #418
kbenson wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic might be worse, initially, but once people are okay with sharing seats in a van, you might see a massive rise in ad-hoc ride-sharing/carpooling. These services know where you're getting picked up and where you're going, so there's no reason that can't route close vehicles/riders designating as okay with sharing to have a higher rider ratio per trip. Even with increased total per-person trips, we might be able…

once people are okay with sharing seats in a van That's going to be a long wait in the US! People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic and have everyone see how fancy their luxury bubble is vs. /gasp/ sharing it with others. Most people here don't want mass transit, they want their big truck / SUV to haul 1-4 people ("it's safer for my kid").

> People would rather pay 10x to sit in their own luxury bubble in traffic

I think it has a lot less to do with the bubble factor than the fact that public transportation in the US just sucks, period.

My 3-mile commute from Menlo Park to Palo Alto would take

- bus: 58 minutes (2 minute walk from home to bus stop + 12 minutes average wait for ECR bus + 10 minutes on ECR + 12 minutes average wait in Palo Alto Transit Center for bus 22 + 15 minutes on bus 22 + 7 minutes walking to work)

- train: 51 minutes (4 minutes walking from home to station + 30 minutes average wait till next train + 5 minute train ride + 12 minutes walking to work).

- running: 35 minutes end to end

- bike: 15 minutes end to end

- Uber: 13-20 minutes

- driving: 8-12 minutes

I bike, but I can see why others would drive. Public transportation is basically defunct here. I can run faster to work than taking public transportation. That says something about seriously how bad it is.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#445

Post by LrnByTeach »

rrhd wrote: post #354
LrnByTeach wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is Summon only, no ownership. when I said $200/month SUBSCRIPTION for 1000 miles, no Per RIDE pay

WHY must YOU keep CAPITALIZING RANDOM WORDS?

Sorry, I will avoid that in future ..

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#446

Post by halflings »

paulie_a wrote: post #440
landryraccoon wrote: post #332

Earlier 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…

But will it be worse than taking public transportation? In my experience Public transportation sucks. It's fine for getting around locally, but is terrible for commuting. For a short 3 month period I found uberpool to be far superior to taking a train. Some days it cost a dollar more. Some days it cost less. The travel time was pretty much equivalent plus it was more comfortable. I hate driving in rush hour traffic b…

You are probably judging public transportation from an American point of view. The vast majority of public transport systems in the US are greatly under-developed compared to what is done elsewhere. A small European city such as Toulouse has orders of magnitude better public transport than Los Angeles or San Francisco for example.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#447

Post by LrnByTeach »

Blazespinnaker wrote: post #376
LrnByTeach wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the most probable scenarios I foresee. If you are a pessimist about autonomous being bigger part of transpiration then add 2 years to DATES shown below. 2021 : Electric Self-driving on-demand FLEET Car 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION from Google, DiDi, Uber, Renault/Nissan,Tesla, VW,Toyota,GM for $400/month 2024 :same 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION $200/month At $200/month Subscription price for 1000 miles/month…

You missed demand pricing

What I mentioned is general pricing..

As you said, there will be all kinds of Demand pricing.. one example You will have 1000/miles per month general rate. If you use peak hours 8 AM to 9 AM , then it is counted as 2X miles of real distance etc..

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#448

Post by wpietri »

Canada wrote: post #311
wpietri wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think crime is a big deal? If you just want to steal a car, cities are littered with them. If you want to rob people, humans are also not hard to find. And an autonomous vehicle will have excellent video recording, fast notification of police, and hard-to-disable vehicle tracking. Weather, though, is a giant issue. Chandler, AZ has 90% dry days and rarely gets more than an inch of rain per month [1], so I…

Automated cars will be better than most of us in these conditions. If you live somewhere that only snows a few days each year, you can't drive in it very well. You don't even have the right tires. Fleets will change their tires for the conditions and the automated system will be just as good at driving in adverse conditions as it would be if it drove in them all year. The sensors will see things human eyes can't. I d…

Sure, eventually it will be better. But I wouldn't be shocked if bad-weather automatic driving lagged at least a decade behind what they can get away with in Arizona. It's a significantly harder problem, and much more difficult to generate reams of data to test against.

Worse, the risk shoots way up, and people will be much less tolerant of risks that aren't under their control. "Driver Ends Up In Ditch" is never news in places with real winter. But "Google Almost Killed My Family" sure will be.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#449

Post by barney54 »

scirocco wrote: post #325
FreakyT wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a car has greater potential for comfort than even a "comfortable" reclining bus seat. For example, right now the idea of a folding bed in a car isn't something you'll ever see as an option, since it would only really appeal to people trying to live in their cars, which probably don't overlap much with the "people who buy fancy cars with fancy extras" market segment. However, in a future where a car can au…

A bed. With seat belt :)

In the future cars might be so safe you don't need a seat belt. Another thing that changes with autonomy is a reduction of crash-related features.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#450

Post by jdminhbg »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #435
jdminhbg wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a lot of places the low population density would mean the F-150 would be 20+ minutes away every time. You might get sick of that and be willing to pay to always have it.

I don't know about that. Imagine for a minute that every car on the road right now were self-driving. How far away do you suppose the nearest pickup truck is from you right now? There may indeed be locations where 20+ minutes is a realistic answer, but I suspect those places are more rare than you think.

From me? Only about 50 yards or so.

But I don't think you can get to "every car is self-driving" without a pretty high proportion of self-ownership in rural or exurban areas. Lots of people live ~20 minutes from the nearest downtown-ish area, and you can't really serve all those people without a pretty serious wait.

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