We still do not have much clarity on the price point. The screenshot (see gniv’s link) shows that a 24-min ride could cost around $8, with an apparent 20% rebate. I suspect that they won’t try to under-cut Uber too dramatically but the long-term costs are bound to be much lower if you don’t need to pay a driver. That illustrative price seems to match this. They certainly have copied Uber’s focus on identifying the be…
I expect the funding model for self driving taxis will be like validated parking. You ride free (or reduced) if you spend $x at whatever business, shopping mall, etc.
Critical Update. You have 2 minutes to close all the windows and leave the car.
More like "critical update is being installed" signaled by the car hitting the breaks hard until full stop in the middle of a highway.
Probably foolishly, I updated the firmware of my van (a Pacifica PHEV, same as Waymo is using) while driving a while back. Since the update was for the infotainment system, the vehicle continued operating just fine (other than temporarily losing access to settings such as climate control, automatic wipers, etc.).
I hope they roll this out in Miami soon. Miami has some of the laxest AV regulations in the country. Also would happily pay to not drive in this mess every day.
As excited as I am for self driving, it makes me sad that I get car/motion sick. I can't exploit self driving to do laptop work, reading, gaming, etc without getting sick - all I can do is sleep basically lol. It will be bittersweet in a self driving car realizing that since I don't have to pay attention, I can do so much more with my time!.. and then promptly stare out the window for an hour.
Not sure how common this is, but I was able to improve my resistance to motion sickness by incrementally doing more reading (interspersed with breaks) over a period of a couple of years that I commuted by bus.
I expect the funding model for self driving taxis will be like validated parking. You ride free (or reduced) if you spend $x at whatever business, shopping mall, etc.
Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice. IMHO, to do less would be reckless showboating that could do unimaginable damage to the AV industry, as well as end up endangering lives. In the tech industry, we don't like to wait, we like moving fast, taking risks, shi…
My favorite way to tell if a car is a self-driving car is to look and see if it has a driver in it.
The news would be different. This news item is focused around the driver and safety. They are slowly changing their messaging from being about self-driving to being about safe-driving. They can't come out right away and say "guys we failed at self driving, it doesn't work", that would tank the personal careers of everyone important in the company. They have to slowly move the needle away from self driving, and then t…
Maybe I haven't seen enough large-scale corporate failures (and the associated damage control, which is how it seems you are characterizing this post), but it feels like you're making this prediction on the basis of not enough data. I can imagine there are other scenarios where Waymo PR makes this post, even though Waymo has not totally failed at producing self-driving cars, but perhaps I'm being insufficiently cynic…
Yes, I agree that I don't have enough data. But previous to this article, I was really supportive of Waymo. When I read the headline about "next steps", I thought we'd hear about some great new systems being rolled out or advancements towards the goal of self-driving, NOT about safety safety safety, drivers drivers drivers. This is how MBAs speak, not engineers.
Mark these words, "At the start", because we'll be hearing them for the next 10 years until Waymo closes up shop. That they are going to market with drivers in the car means that the business has pivoted from "can we do driverless taxi" to "can we make money as uber-but-with-employees". The next announcement from Waymo will be that they are cutting staff "mostly from R&D". The announcement after that will be that the…
Mark these words. In 10 years time we'll still be hearing the same comments about Waymo & their competitors because there still will be certain combinations of passenger, route & conditions that Waymo will refuse to take without a safety driver along. But since Waymo will handle the vast majority of rides we'll just tune out those comments. Handling all rides & conditions is a very hard problem and it'll take decades…
I assume safety drivers will be used when they expand into new cities to make sure they are able to learn the traffic patterns, etc.
Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice. IMHO, to do less would be reckless showboating that could do unimaginable damage to the AV industry, as well as end up endangering lives. In the tech industry, we don't like to wait, we like moving fast, taking risks, shi…
My favorite way to tell if a car is a self-driving car is to look and see if it has a driver in it.
What if it's self-driving, but a passenger is riding in the front?