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Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#81

Post by chubot »

twmahna wrote: post #44

Just a few months ago, I recall many skeptics on HN claiming that full driverless technology was 10-20 years away. Do those people still think that it's going to take 10-20 years for this tech to reach say, New York, now that it's live in Phoenix?

Yes, because this announcement is a lot like their previous announcements -- fudging the language to make it sound like it's more available than it is.

It's not even generally available in Phoenix yet. I'm sure someone on HN lives in Phoenix, and has never used Waymo before. Tell us if you can get a driverless ride.

It's got a long way to go before it's something like Uber in Phoenix. It's got even longer to go before it's something like Uber in NYC (10-20 years still sounds right).

----

The funny thing is that the pandemic should have been HUGE for self-driving cars... Most people I know haven't taken rideshare in 6+ months because they don't want to ride with somebody, and I only did so in the last few weeeks.

But it was a non-event. I didn't hear anyone talking about self-driving in the last 6 months. If it really worked, and was really available, then there would be certainly some people who would pay 2-5x the price of Lyft/Uber for no driver. (Not most people, but some people.)

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#82

Post by a_t48 »

fullshark wrote: post #37
actuator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo was started in 2009, they have existed for half of Google's existence. The amount of research and money that has gone into it is not comparable to things like Google Reader. Also, they seem to have the lead over most and the market opportunity is huge.

I'd argue Tesla has the lead. Perhaps their approach has technical limitations that make full self-driving impossible so it's moot but they have the lead.

Tesla is not in the lead, nobody I've talked to in self driving even thinks about Tesla.

Disclosure: I work at a self driving company that is neither Tesla nor Waymo.

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#83

Post by jeffbee »

advisedwang wrote: post #23

What is the actual advantage to consumers over an Uber? Novelty will wear off, and so to survive Waymo will actually need to be better in some way. Can anyone in Phoenix answer if Waymo is cheaper? Is Waymo hoping people will choose Waymo for safety?

Let's see: you won't get raped by the driver, a professionally-maintained vehicle is likely to be more safe than a Prius with 500k miles and no windshield wipers, you won't be cyberstalked by "God View" gawkers at Uber HQ, ...

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#84

Post by nickik »

dbt00 wrote: post #79
fullshark wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue Tesla has the lead. Perhaps their approach has technical limitations that make full self-driving impossible so it's moot but they have the lead.

I own a Tesla model 3 with the V3 hardware and FSD package. They are not even close to being able to do what Waymo does.

And Waymo is not close to what Tesla does. Different strategy coming at it from different sides.

The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money.

Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waymo has incredibly few ours driven on public roads outside of a limited area.

Self driving is mostly a software problem, and to solve general driving, a gigantic learning problem. How is gone solve that first and scale it, is open.

I would put my money on Tesla, and I wouldn't invest in Waymo if I could.

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#85

Post by pb7 »

chubot wrote: post #81
twmahna wrote: post #44

Just a few months ago, I recall many skeptics on HN claiming that full driverless technology was 10-20 years away. Do those people still think that it's going to take 10-20 years for this tech to reach say, New York, now that it's live in Phoenix?

Yes, because this announcement is a lot like their previous announcements -- fudging the language to make it sound like it's more available than it is. It's not even generally available in Phoenix yet. I'm sure someone on HN lives in Phoenix, and has never used Waymo before. Tell us if you can get a driverless ride. It's got a long way to go before it's something like Uber in Phoenix. It's got even longer to go befor…

I don't see the relationship between COVID and increased demand for self-driving. You're still sharing the same vehicle with potentially hundreds of people a day that are touching all the same surfaces. The driver is only a vector if they become infected. Other than that, the highest risk is touching doors and such.

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#86

Post by dmode »

nickik wrote: post #84
dbt00 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Tesla model 3 with the V3 hardware and FSD package. They are not even close to being able to do what Waymo does.

And Waymo is not close to what Tesla does. Different strategy coming at it from different sides. The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money. Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waym…

I am also a Tesla owner, and you can talk to Tesla owners and get their perspective on Tesla's autopilot capabilities. I have owned Tesla for 5 years, and also have a 2018 Model 3. Tesla is nowhere close to full self driving capability, and cannot still handle basic uses cases like driving on well marked freeways within lanes without randomly phantom braking.

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#87

Post by almost_usual »

nickik wrote: post #84
dbt00 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Tesla model 3 with the V3 hardware and FSD package. They are not even close to being able to do what Waymo does.

And Waymo is not close to what Tesla does. Different strategy coming at it from different sides. The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money. Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waym…

> The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money.

Probably Waymo

> Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waymo has incredibly few ours driven on public roads outside of a limited area.

and Alphabet / Google is a money printing machine, if they get to self driving first it’s pretty much over for their competition.

> many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all

So self driving technology isn’t a solid business model? Why are so many companies trying to do this?

What’s stopping Waymo from patenting this after they get to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their competitors?

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#88

Post by nickik »

jeffbee wrote: post #78
flokie wrote: post #28

I know the community is generally very negative/skeptic on this (at least based on the 21 comments so far below), but this is an amazing technical & business accomplishment. Congratulations! The blog post is relatively clear that ramp up will take a few weeks - "we’ll start with those who are already a part of Waymo One and, over the next several weeks, welcome more people directly into the service through our app" b…

The HN discussion around Waymo is always overwhelmingly negative because Waymo doesn't fit into the HN cosmology of innovation. Self-driving will come to pass when we force an AI to watch us play Pole Position for a million years, is the HN timeline. HN is comfortable with this Tesla narrative. Less comfortable is the idea that self-driving will be brought to market by lots of control theory PhDs and a really large n…

HN is one of the most negative about Tesla of any place I have seen, including car forums. The hate against Tesla and their approach is about 10x more aggressive then the skepticism of Waymo.

Also, I'm pretty sure Tesla has a lot of PhDs and probably about 100x more unit tests then Waymo as they have an gigantic amount of strange real-world corner cases that they have converted to unit-tests. There is no way Waymo has anything like that database, as they simply have never encountered all the strange scenarios Tesla see daily on the roads of China and all the other places they drive around in.

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#89

Post by fullshark »

fullshark wrote: post #47
scotth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...so in what way do they have the lead?

It's not a certainty

I think I misunderstood your comment initially and you were merely curious what the argument is. The argument has been made elsewhere in the thread but basically they have a real product with real usage / data creating a positive data feedback loop that will lead to incremental improvements. The question is whether it will improve along an asymptote far from full self driving (what most people believe) or some leap occurs in the future or some technology can be added to their capabilities to achieve full self driving at some point. The latter is possible imo even if highly unlikely.

The fact remains they are out there, and you can buy them, and they can do some sort of self-driving. Waymo is an impressive tech demo at this point.

Re: Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix

#90

Post by nickik »

almost_usual wrote: post #87
nickik wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Waymo is not close to what Tesla does. Different strategy coming at it from different sides. The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money. Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waym…

> The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money. Probably Waymo > Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waymo has incredibly few ours driven on public roads outside of a limited area. an…

> Probably Waymo

Waymo has spend 10+ years and they can now barley driven in possibly the easiest location in the world, a location where they have logged millions of miles. Waymo focuses on the easiest thing first. The technology on their car is incredibly expensive both now and to scale it to 10k, 100k, 1M vehicles is a huge challenge, both capital and manufacturing.

They are like a rocket company who says, we have this amazing air-frame, launch pad, software we only need to figure out the engine, then we are gone make money.

I place my bets on the company that has million of cars on the road, seeing every corner case possible in every location, because that is the real challenge to overcome if you actually want to have many 1000s of cars in every city. Plus the sensor suit and compute power in a Tesla maybe cost a few 1000$, scalable to 10s of millions of vehicles.

I don't think either of them is really close to self driving, but at least Tesla is focusing on the right problem with a scalable solution.

> What’s stopping Waymo from patenting this after they get to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their competitors?

If their technology actually works they would want to dominate the self driving taxi market and not sell it to the competition.

Their competitors would then have to install this whole Waymo hardware suit, making it not very practical for OEMs and normal cars. Uber or Lyft might be costumers, but why would you sell it to them if you could just replace them.

Waymo has burned money for 10+ years, signing a few licensing deal for a slightly better Mobile Eye will not give the return they are hoping for.

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