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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

#161

Post by gbronner »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #150
jfoster wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the most significant way in which Tesla have the lead is simple but a bit unintuitive. It's that their customers pay for the cars. Think about how much capital will be required to put a million Waymo vehicles on the road. How many zeros are there on that number? Who is going to be paying that bill? Given this, even if Waymo are first to driving 100% perfectly, I expect that Tesla will eventually le…

Once it's confident in the technology and business model, Google can absolutely afford the capex of putting a million Waymo cars on the road. They'd probably take out a massive loan, and the worst case is having to ditch the lidar gear and sell the fleet on the second hand market. But it's doable. But where did you get a million cars from? To equal Tesla's existing fleet? Uber has 3 million active drivers globally. I…

Current setup seems to work on existing cars. They can just sell conversion kits for a few years -- it will be like an aftermarket stereo. They don't need to own all the cars.

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

#163

Post by reitzensteinm »

gbronner wrote: post #161
reitzensteinm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once it's confident in the technology and business model, Google can absolutely afford the capex of putting a million Waymo cars on the road. They'd probably take out a massive loan, and the worst case is having to ditch the lidar gear and sell the fleet on the second hand market. But it's doable. But where did you get a million cars from? To equal Tesla's existing fleet? Uber has 3 million active drivers globally. I…

Current setup seems to work on existing cars. They can just sell conversion kits for a few years -- it will be like an aftermarket stereo. They don't need to own all the cars.

I just don't see that happening. Uber is worth $65 billion and they have to give 80% of their revenue to their drivers.

If Waymo can get a 60% gross margin instead of a 20% gross margin, their profits could be an order of magnitude higher.

This is a trillion dollar opportunity, and its the first thing Alphabet is seriously pursuing that can rival search.

Aftermarket conversion kits are a rounding error and there's no long term moat. And that's before you start to get in to issues like improper installation and use, aftermarket modification, accidents causing bad PR when the gear isn't even running etc.

Remember that AEB demo a decade back where the car just slammed in to the object it was meant to stop for and it turned out they hadn't turned it on? Nightmare.

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

#164

Post by dzhiurgis »

wetpaws wrote: post #133
Judgmentality wrote: post #2

https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr... > 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 So...this is just an extension of what they currently do where it's not really open to the public? Waymo One is something you have to apply for and almost nobody gets in. It's not clear to me what "w…

Pretty sure this is intentional. Waymo had an insane (decades) head start in regards to self driving technology and was notably quiet about it. While Uber and other folks are all boasting about their self driving project and collecting the lion share of controversy and unwanted attention, waymo is quietly, step by step, heading towards it's total dominance, staying completely off the radar.

> staying completely off the radar.

*off the LIDAR.

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

#165

Post by ra7 »

nickik wrote: post #155
dmode wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

So, can Tesla do this right now?

Also, why should Waymo not use HD mapping when they clearly have the ability to do it? Seems like a weird criteria.

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

#166

Post by nbardy »

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.

In that framing Tesla is already ahead in data collection. Pure numbers of cars dwarfs the advantage of lidar

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

#167

Post by jimmydorry »

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…

I can't imagine waymo or any of the other groups that are basing their technology around lidar, managing to get to "commodity stage". LIDAR has a fixed range it is useful for, which is greatly shrunk when you also need to factor in vehicle response time. Cameras can see as far as humans can (further actually, as it can see things more reliably at greater distances than humans). Going beyond 25mph is already massively encroaching on the upper ranges of safety with LIDAR systems.

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

#168

Post by bsder »

ncallaway wrote: post #158
bsder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Somebody has to pay for the fact that a driver lost 90 minutes in a traffic jam because some idiot caused a traffic fatality and blocked everything up. Or does the driver have a right to kick you out of his cab when the ride becomes unprofitable?

The only question about payment is "Who?"

As much as you can fight it, at the end of the day the answer will always be "the end consumer." The only question is whether you pay it on every ride as an up front increase or whether you pay it on the unfortunate ride as an addition. Both are perfectly acceptable solutions and can even coexist in the market in different companies.

People have gotten spoiled by the fact that ridesharing was burning VC cash to subsidize exceptional cases. Once those costs all quit being subsidized, they're all going to materialize back to the end consumer.

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

#169

Post by QuercusMax »

olyjohn wrote: post #107
jrockway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they have the lead in the sense that you can drive to a Tesla dealership today and buy a car that will kind of sort of drive you home. That's something!

Big deal. You can do this in a Honda Fit for crying out loud.

Nissan Leaf, too. It's not great, but is good enough that I'm not scared to look away for a moment to change stations.

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

#170

Post by BoorishBears »

bsder wrote: post #168
ncallaway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Somebody has to pay for the fact that a driver lost 90 minutes in a traffic jam because some idiot caused a traffic fatality and blocked everything up. Or does the driver have a right to kick you out of his cab when the ride becomes unprofitable? The only question about payment is "Who?" As much as you can fight it, at the end of the day the answer will always be "the end consumer." The only question is whether you p…

Did someone say no one should pay for the traffic jam?

What no one ends up paying for when incentives are aligned however, is taking the tourist from the airport on an unsolicited tour of the city rather than directly to their destination.

Or the taxi driver who accidentally ends up on that one road that always has an idiot who caused a fatality when there were others that were less busy at the time.

_That_ is what most people are worried about, not having to reimburse someone for an unforeseen circumstance.

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