Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 634 posts

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

#481

Post by dx034 »

StreamBright wrote: post #133
davidkuhta wrote: post #129

Excited about the technology and expected this news eventually, but in less of a "Bam, we did it" and more of a "Coming Dec 2017... look for new autonomous vehicles, they'll be bright orange with flashing lights". Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on: 1. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists': a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board…

I think the question is what happens when the first accident happens caused by autonomous car. US law is not really forgiving in this regard.

In that case the manufacturer (or their insurance) will pay for it. Let that be $10m if someone dies, maybe a bit less if someone gets seriously hurt. Even if it's a multiple of that, that's in no relation to the cost of the programme. As long as they demonstrate that their cars are still a magnitude safer than other cars, paying fines will be enough.

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

#482

Post by randycupertino »

landryraccoon wrote: post #332
aidenn0 wrote: post #232

Earlier 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,…

> 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…

> This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better.

Yeah, of course self driving cars are going to make traffic way worse! Who even thinks otherwise? Suddenly you are going to have millions of disabled and homebound seniors wanting the cars to take them to do grocery shopping and errands, kids being driven around to and from from school and practice, and low income residents sleeping in their cars commuting to work in higher income areas of the country. Self driving cars will make traffic exponentially worse.

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

#483

Post by oblio »

LrnByTeach wrote: post #467
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, traffic will be worse when you compare one bus with 50 people vs. 12 self-driving cars with 4 people each. A bus is 14-15m long, whereas even a small car like the Chevy Bolt is over 4m. So parked bumper-to-bumper the cars produce >3x as much traffic, and then you add some gaps for actually driving you're up to 4x. Personally I'm very skeptical of both the claim that a) self-driving cars will see huge adoptatio…

> say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market. In year 2000, in order to run a medium web site as a company you need 2 Servers one for each Database, WebServer. People bo…

Are cars comparatively cheaper than in the Model T era?

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

#484

Post by dx034 »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #70

There's a positive feedback loop that will happen: As they get more cars on to the road, the log more real world miles, which makes the cars better, which gets more cars onto the road which log more miles... I wonder how valuable this is?

Not sure how much that is worth. Tesla collects a huge amount of data but that doesn't help as much as some had hoped. You need to interpret all that data which is expensive and complicated.

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

#485

Post by Piskvorrr »

dheera wrote: post #444
seanp2k2 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 C…

Typing this as I exit the world's fifth best public transit system: the exact same sentiment exists here - for a commute of 45 min by public transport, 120 min by bike, and 90 min by car (morning traffic+cruising for a spot), people still pick the car option, as it's "more comfortable".

So, while the efficiency of public transport might be a concern, car-as-a-status-symbol seems to be near-universal.

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

#486

Post by dagw »

oblio wrote: post #483
LrnByTeach wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market. In year 2000, in order to run a medium web site as a company you need 2 Servers one for each Database, WebServer. People bo…

Are cars comparatively cheaper than in the Model T era?

I think a Model T was about $22k-$25k in today's money.

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

#487

Post by konschubert »

greeneggs wrote: post #430
eggpy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno I can see this remaining small-scale for a while so Waymo can gather data about how people feel about the experience. I can see the backlash now if they were to suddenly unleash a battalion of fully autonomous vehicles on the unsuspecting public. I suspect keeping the numbers relatively low will be a good way to gather just how disturbing this is to the general populace without overwhelming people and ultimat…

On the other hand, there is also an advantage to moving quickly. Waymo seems to be far ahead, but if others (like Tesla?) release their self-driving vehicles prematurely, that would cause a backlash perhaps against the whole industry. (For example, Uber's self-driving cars running red lights in San Francisco I think helped result in tighter regulations across California.) Moving quickly to show that the technology is…

My impression was that tesla is years behind Waymo.

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

#488

Post by lyschoening »

aecs99 wrote: post #209
peoplewindow wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would self-ownership ever be the goal though? I can see people just moving en-masse to Lyft/Uber type services that use a mix of people and machines, with people eventually being phased out, and simply giving up their own cars (except for those who genuinely enjoy driving).

Interesting question. Like you, I too believe that a large population may prefer Lyft/Uber type services instead of dealing with the concerns of owning one (e.g., parking, requiring space for parking, insurance, time spent in fueling, maintenance, etc.). However, I tend to think that there still may be a decent size of population who'd prefer owning. Others mentioned the convenience of using cars for storage, being r…

Here in Copenhagen we have a car sharing service called Greenmobility that offers 45 hours of driving for about $190 a month. Electricity, insurance and city-wide parking fees are included and 45 hours a month are sufficient for commuting.

The cost of owning a car would be at least thrice what this service costs. A loan on a new car starts at almost $400 a month. The electricity alone would cost a private individual around $100.

The inconvenience of having to find a car and being unable to keep it for extended periods is real and may be enough reason for many to want to own a self-driving car, but the cost of owning is certainly higher.

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

#489

Post by IanCal »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #459
kjksf wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self-driving platform will financially nudge you in the right direction. Currently Uber charges more during rush hour. It's rather obvious that self-driving operator will implement similar price discrimination e.g. $10 if you drive alone, $5 if you share with one or more people. And the more they want you to share, the bigger the surcharge e.g. if $10 vs. $5 doesn't have desired effect then maybe $20 vs $5 will.…

Still, traffic will be worse when you compare one bus with 50 people vs. 12 self-driving cars with 4 people each. A bus is 14-15m long, whereas even a small car like the Chevy Bolt is over 4m. So parked bumper-to-bumper the cars produce >3x as much traffic, and then you add some gaps for actually driving you're up to 4x. Personally I'm very skeptical of both the claim that a) self-driving cars will see huge adoptatio…

> On the latter point, we have basic economic theory: say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market.

That's assuming a monopoly.

> Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month?

Because if they priced it at $400 then a competitor could price it at $300 and make more money.

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

#490

Post by dagw »

Johnny555 wrote: post #471
ekianjo wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have way more passagers on a highway than on railroads though. Capacity wise cars are the better choice because its a continuous flow. Plus, they get you where you need to be, not just where the track stops.

No, you can't. A rail line can carry many more passengers/hour than cars, even self driving cars. From https://letsgola.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/capacity-101/ A typical freeway lane today can carry around 3600 passengers per hour. Reduce the headway between cars to 1 second and put 4 passengers in every car and that goes up to 14,400 pax/hr However, run a heavy rail line and run trains every 3 minutes, and it can car…

The number of areas in the world where you have two points where it's worth running a heavy line train every 3 minutes is minuscule.
Post reply on HN