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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#111

Post by actusual »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

Definitionally, the achievement of self driving vehicles does not require AGI. Doing one task very well requires a subset of AGI called Weak AI.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#112

Post by fastball »

espadrine wrote: post #47

Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities. Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?) Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant…

SAE levels are pretty garbage.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#113

Post by tazjin »

ra7 wrote: post #82
bluGill wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not scale to rural areas though. There are some roads were you don't need to look at the road in front of your: it is there and nothing else is. Instead you need to watch the ditches in a wide area around because that is where wildlife will jump out of in front of you.

Is there a market for taxis in the rural areas? They have little incentive to expand there if there's no money to be made.

I can't speak for the US, but in Europe (experiences from Sweden, Norway, Russia) rural areas usually have a handful of taxi drivers and you "use their services" by calling their numbers which you can get from locals.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#114

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

XorNot wrote: post #97
hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #85

I wonder if the cars will always have a human chaperone. Not as a safety driver, but to prevent riders from trashing the car.

You wouldn't achieve any scaling benefits there. But also - trashing an autonomous car (aka a car full of cameras and sensors, which you charged to your credit card) seems like one of those self-limiting problems as the people who do it go bankrupt or to jail.

There's a neverending stream of way-too-drunk people who need a taxi (or at least there were, in the beforetimes). I don't see that happening.

Also, I don't particularly want to ride in a car with a bunch of sensors and cameras monitoring my every move.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#115

Post by cobookman »

Yajirobe wrote: post #7

Cue the haters who said Waymo is a money dump

Waymo has raised 5.5B so far. How much does it cost to add a market and how long will it take to recoup those costs?

How much are Waymo vehicle operational costs vs rider revenue? How long do Waymo vehicles last?

Even with this announcement, we do not know if Waymo has a clear path to profitability.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#116

Post by 0-_-0 »

ericye16 wrote: post #96
tshaddox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those SAE levels apparently don’t specifically mention the geographic range the vehicle can operate in [0], but at some point that’s pretty important. Having “full automation” on a very tiny section of roads is hardly what I would call “orders of magnitude above the rest.” [0] edit: that's incorrect, L4 and L5 are primarily defined by differences in geography range.

The difference between SAE level 4 and 5 is explicitly whether the autonomy is geographically limited or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#SAE_Classific...

Still, Level 3 can be more "advanced" than Level 4.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#117

Post by bpodgursky »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

They are not legally allowed to not have a human driver onboard. It's a legal requirement that is not a relevant signal one way or another.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#118

Post by jefftk »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #85

I wonder if the cars will always have a human chaperone. Not as a safety driver, but to prevent riders from trashing the car.

They don't in Phoenix; the article links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdrV9wqXyH0 as an example.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself.)

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#119

Post by michaelt »

stickfigure wrote: post #16

Why did they pick Jaguar for the platform? That seems like an obscure choice.

Well, as long as the tech isn't ready to sell to consumers, 'partnering' with Waymo doesn't have all that much upside for automakers. It's not like Waymo is handing over the secret sauce or promising them exclusivity. I also suspect over the past decade Waymo has found fewer and fewer automakers fighting to make a deal with them.

Jaguar doesn't have a high-profile competing autonomy effort of their own, that would create a conflict of interest and/or invite spying.

The i-pace is electric, which makes integration easier and won't hurt for PR purposes.

And it's luxurious enough that no matter who you're showing the tech off to, it won't be a big step down from their personal car.

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