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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

#111

Post by polishTar »

sandworm101 wrote: post #46
jowday wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They state the date pretty clearly in the article. >Beginning today, October 8, we’re excited to open up our fully driverless offering to Waymo One riders. Members of the public service can now take friends and family along on their rides and share their experience with the world.

"Members of the public service" is different than "members of the public". This is still a closed beta. But now it seems you are allowed to have your friends along for the ride. I wonder if these friends and family persons are subject to any NDA.

Waymo One doesn't use NDAs and users are allowed to bring friends with them, but Waymo also has an "early rider" program that's more restrictive and does use NDAs.

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

#112

Post by nitrogen »

vkou wrote: post #25
lhorie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be too cynical to assume this whole thing is going to get shutdown after a few years due to failing to gain enough traction (due to people being wary of Google's track record of doing so with their in-google properties)?

Do you really care about the longevity of the taxi company whose cars you are riding in? Half the time, I don't even know which company that is. Or the longevity of the particular farm from which your grocery's tomatoes have been sourced from? This isn't e-mail. The cost and hassle of switching to a competing service is nearly zero.

Or the longevity of the particular farm from which your grocery's tomatoes have been sourced from?

Some people care. They buy directly from the same families for many decades.

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

#113

Post by neil_s »

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…

Thank you for voicing some sanity here. This comment thread has all the standard HN cynicism (Google killed Reader omg), but criticism over a gradual rollout over a few weeks for a physical service is new to me.

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

#114

Post by gmadsen »

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.

on what grounds? They in no way shape or form have a lead on autonomous capability. It is literally not even close

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

#115

Post by bsaul »

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…

You seem to know a lot about the difference of approach between waymo and tesla. Do you have any links that would give more on that ?

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

#116

Post by WhompingWindows »

nickik wrote: post #88
jeffbee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

A lot of sites/people/institutions are very negative about Tesla, and a lot are devotional to Tesla. If you're reading social media, keep in mind that negative/controversial/strong opinions are upvoted/elevated relative to moderated/reasonable stances.

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

#117

Post by chubot »

pb7 wrote: post #85
chubot wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The car can be cleaned either way -- with a driver or without. That's what happens in grocery stores and hotels now. They wipe down the shopping carts, and they seal the doors.

But there's only one way remove the possibility of getting sick from the driver. We've been talking about that for 15 years, but it doesn't work yet.

I don't think the risks are equivalent on a per-person basis either. The "viral load" apparently matters, so using the same car as 1 person is not the same as riding with a sick driver for say 30 minutes. It could be that the driver risk is great than that of 30 passengers combined.

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

#118

Post by dang »

nickik wrote: post #88
jeffbee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

This is an extreme case of the notice-dislike bias leading to false feelings of generality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....

I assure you that people on the other side of this "Yay $Bigco" vs. "Boo $Bigco" death match feel that HN is extremely biased in exactly the reverse way, and make just as grandiose claims.

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

#119

Post by WhompingWindows »

I'd say Waymo has taken a measured, conservative approach and their lack of major incidents is a huge advantage. They're taking it slow because they're far ahead of their competitors, they already have SDCs up and carrying passengers in exchange for payment. Yes, it's an easy geographic region, but it's hard to deny their tech and business is ahead of their competitors.

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

#120

Post by chubot »

RivieraKid wrote: post #92
chubot wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Will you cease to be a skeptic once Waymo One is open to anyone?

Weird question :) My claim is that it won't be open to "anyone" in a useful way any time soon.

And you need to define "anyone" -- that's precisely what's being fudged here (and what's been fudged in previous announcements).

To be clear: I think Waymo will fold or be wound down before this happens.

In a previous comment, I said that IF we get economically feasible self-driving cars in the next 10-20 years, then it will not be from Waymo. It will be from a breakthrough out of left field. In other words, "we" will have thrown out millions of lines of code and billions of dollars of investment, and started over.

Obviously, if they roll it out, then I'll be wrong! But if I thought that was possible now, then I wouldn't bother calling them out on it.

Previous comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22632588

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