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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

#151

Post by toast0 »

vkou wrote: post #148
toast0 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really care about the longevity of the taxi company whose cars you are riding in? Not that particular company no, but the longevity of taxi service in general, yes. Although, it depends on why I'm riding in a taxi. If it's an occasional ride, it's not a big deal if taxi service disappears, I can pay for long term parking at the airport, or call a friend, or something. If it's an everyday ride, loss of servic…

If all current taxi, and taxi-like services died overnight, the barrier to entry into the industry would be a guy with a high school degree, a cellphone, a driver's license, a beat-up Prius, and a yellow paintjob for it. Your cited risk is not realistic. > The obvious part is, you might get used to it, only for it to be dropped. > But also, they may run competitors out of business before dropping it, leaving you with…

Location matters here. Licensed taxis in Santa Clara county are hard to get reliably outside of the airport and train station. Otherwise, you call a number and someone says a car is coming, and 80% of the time a car does come; the other 20% of the time, you don't get to the airport on time. Yes, it doesn't take much to drive someone somewhere, but if hypothetically Waymo drives Uber and Lyft out of business and then drops out themselves, VCs will have learned that the unlicensed taxi business is a waste of money, and we'd be back to licensed taxis, which is a lot lower quality of service.

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

#152

Post by lhorie »

petra wrote: post #123
lhorie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really care about the longevity of the taxi company whose cars you are riding in? I mean, look at McDonalds and Coca-Cola, for example. I'm skeptical about the idea that simply having the SDV technology somehow also translates to being in a leadership position in terms of regulation, customer support, branding/marketing/being-installed-on-peoples-phones, etc etc. Uber already had to fight uphill regarding re…

Yes. There are other important factors. But at least for the next few years, technology is the barrier. So Google can partner with Lyft, for example, to get a good brand, app, customer service, regulation, etc. But on top of that, the brand in this market is the promise "our cars are safe". Google is in a distinct place to own that, because of all the press they had, they press they will have, and by really leading t…

I'm not actually convinced that technology is necessarily a barrier. People take ubers today. Heck, people take taxis today.

I think a bigger challenge for Waymo is going to be getting trust and regulatory favor. Everyone keeps clinging on to the "oh, comparing prices, waymo is cheaper than uber because there's no driver!" narrative, but from what I've seen from the few reports so far, the prices aren't all that different from other services.

I can also imagine quite a few other not-so-flattering narratives being relatively realistic:

- "I'll never trust some faceless AI w/ my kids in the car! I'd rather pay a bit more and get a real person behind the wheel. Support the local economy, you know?"

- "Oh, so you want a license to put an entire class of workers out of jobs under MY government term?"

- "I got a trashed waymo car and customer support ignored me when I asked for a refund!"

- "I took a waymo after partying a bit too hard and now I'm locked out of all my google accounts with no recourse!"

- etc

I think people on HN often give way too much weight to the "cool tech" aspect of waymo, and disregard the very real and very significant meat bag aspect.

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

#153

Post by drivebycomment »

drfuchs wrote: post #138

Can anyone knowledgeably speak to what these gizmos can and can't do? Can I tell it to "please back into the driveway on the left side, but not so close that I can't open the garage door, and open the trunk, so I can easily load a box of my stuff"? Or "please go around to the back entrance where they deliver the to-go orders"? "No, down there where that guy is standing." Etc.

The trunk is not accessible per:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/20/18175563/waymo-one-custom...

I think they have the computers in the trunk.

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

#154

Post by bsder »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #141
bsder wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> problems like demand vs availability and wait times (two of the criticisms lashed out at taxis, in comparison to Uber). These were never my problems with taxi service. Tracking is the thing that makes the rideshare services better--and taxis could apply that, if they wanted to. Tracking solves most bad things about taxis. "Is it actually coming? How long until it gets here? Did they hit something unexpected? etc."

> Tracking is the thing that makes the rideshare services better--and taxis could apply that, if they wanted to. Don’t forget: upfront pricing. Most taxis won’t tell you the price until you get to your destination. And how do you know they took the quickest route?

> Don’t forget: upfront pricing.

Again, I can't remember ever having that problem.

If I had to phone call the taxi--I always got a price. That's fair as the price needs to be high enough to roll the taxi.

If I didn't, then the price was specified--$X from Zone A to B and $0.Y for time spent not moving.

> And how do you know they took the quickest route?

This is questionable even with ridesharing. I regularly have to fight with drivers going to my airport in the morning. "Look, I know your route says go via State 666. Don't. It's completely green now but in 10 minutes at 6:45AM that road goes from green to black AND you can't change route once you're on it--it will take 40+ minutes. Go via Interstate 13--it will take 20 minutes, tops. Everything will be fine, and, if it isn't, you can get off the Interstate and take another route, of which there are lots."

And those are exactly the kind of routes that cabbies use to inflate prices. See: Las Vegas--a good cabbie moves a couple of streets in the wrong direction to get away from the strip, moves most of the distance, and then works back to your destination.

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

#155

Post by nickik »

dmode wrote: post #86
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…

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.

Payoff to investment and work is not always linear. In something this difficult I going with the approach I believe in. I'm not gone change my opinion on that because of a specific problem of the current version.

Maybe if Waymo demonstrates that they can drive on and off all major highways in the world without hd mapping of them. Then i might believe they are ahead.

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

#156

Post by adrr »

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 own a Tesla model 3 with hw3 and FSD. Tesla is no where close to self driving. I’d settle for smart summon that doesn’t run over curbs or drive on the wrong side of the lane. I’ve given up on navigate on autopilot.

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

#157

Post by lhorie »

bsder wrote: post #131
lhorie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they might have a "lead" in the sense that they have technology to avoid having a driver, but there's still chicken-and-egg problems like demand vs availability and wait times (two of the criticisms lashed out at taxis, in comparison to Uber). I'm also curious about how driverless plays out in the real world (e.g. is there an equivalent of "oh shoot, I accidentally put the wrong address, can you drop me off ove…

> problems like demand vs availability and wait times (two of the criticisms lashed out at taxis, in comparison to Uber). These were never my problems with taxi service. Tracking is the thing that makes the rideshare services better--and taxis could apply that, if they wanted to. Tracking solves most bad things about taxis. "Is it actually coming? How long until it gets here? Did they hit something unexpected? etc."

Availability is definitely a big one in big cities. I recall seeing coverage maps where virtually all of the suburbs were severely underserved by existing taxi unions, since downtown was where volume was perceived to be.

The whole Prop22 thing in California is another facet to the equation: ride sharing companies argue that freelance status means they have a far bigger, broader and elastic fleet, whereas a model with fixed costs would make availability look more like taxis before rideshare came along.

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

#158

Post by ncallaway »

bsder wrote: post #154
colejohnson66 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tracking is the thing that makes the rideshare services better--and taxis could apply that, if they wanted to. Don’t forget: upfront pricing. Most taxis won’t tell you the price until you get to your destination. And how do you know they took the quickest route?

> Don’t forget: upfront pricing. Again, I can't remember ever having that problem. If I had to phone call the taxi--I always got a price. That's fair as the price needs to be high enough to roll the taxi. If I didn't, then the price was specified--$X from Zone A to B and $0.Y for time spent not moving. > And how do you know they took the quickest route? This is questionable even with ridesharing. I regularly have to…

The quickest route is as problematic for a rideshare, because the trip was priced upfront.

If they take a suboptimal route, you as the rider aren't charged more.

The incentives are also better aligned, since the driver now would always prefer the quickest route, since they get the same payment regardless of the route.

> If I didn't, then the price was specified--$X from Zone A to B and $0.Y for time spent not moving.

That's...exactly the non-upfront pricing that got taxis killed. Upfront pricing is $X to your destination. It's not route and time dependent as almost all taxi pricing was.

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

#159

Post by wstrange »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #110
donor20 wrote: post #102

Fantastic. The reality is that good mapping and some level of lidar (which is getting cheaper faster for low res/angle sensors) is somewhat game changing in terms of self driving vehicle reliability. Tesla will miss out I think by not taking advantage of doing even the cheapest possible one sensor lidar to augment their existing system. $500 -> in the future $100 for the data lidar gives you is gold.

I imagine you're correct that lidar is a huge leg-up in the race to self-driving. However, I can see a scenario where, despite that, it is not the right choice for Tesla. It's important to remember that self-driving technology will be commodity at some point (like the lidar units themselves). Whoever offers the most affordable option meeting some baseline performance will dominate the market and licence to every self…

Your analysis assumes Lidar is going to remain expensive. That is likely not the case...

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

#160

Post by gbronner »

nickik wrote: post #90
almost_usual wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hardware costs will go way down. Lidar @ 100$, cheaper chips, cheaper sensors, etc.

They are still in a learning phase -- they charge enough so as not to distort rider behavior, but they expect to lose money on each ride.

Apart from that, why build cars when you can sell the system to everyone?

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