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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

#151

Post by spoonjim »

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…

Beating humans doesn’t require AGI. Just not drinking, texting, or falling asleep will get you halfway there.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#152

Post by eachro »

pm90 wrote: post #50
eachro wrote: post #36

SF seems like not the best place to pilot this from a risk management perspective (ex: homeless people messing with the cars).

It says they will have a human onboard at all times.

I remember this one bit from a video on self driving cars back a few years ago where someone basically said that self driving cars would not work well in cities because people will always want to mess with the cars just because they can.

Consider how in the early 2000s when people would mess around with AIM's smarterchild chat bot and gave it outlandish scenarios just to see how it would react. I have to imagine you might see something similar here with these cars but you're right that having a human onboard would probably curtail these interactions.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#154

Post by OJFord »

gruez wrote: post #143
hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other passengers serve as the social discouragement in that instance. Most human-driven rail transit isn't monitored by rail employees.

What about elevators? Sure it's sometimes shared, but you can also ride alone.

I'm not saying I agree it will be a big problem - but graffiti, littering, urination definitely happen in public lifts.

I imagine though that it'll just be something you can report when it comes along, then it gets sent off for cleaning, they pull up its recent rides, and send you a different car.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#155

Post by [deleted] »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #114
XorNot wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#156

Post by lifekaizen »

rpmisms wrote: post #39
purple_ferret wrote: post #6

elon in shambles

Waymo and Tesla have very different approaches to autonomy. I think both are valid avenues, but it's fascinating to watch them develop in parallel. You don't have to make it into a spiteful contest.

Definitely both valid business approaches, Tesla more interesting from a startup / leverage approach. As a consumer, I'm less excited about Tesla putting out beta software in situations where mistakes can be deadly https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/business/tesla-autopilot-...

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#157

Post by ahnick »

Are there any thought pieces on how cities can adapt roads to accommodate SAE level 4 cars to facilitate rolling out a wider deployment more quickly? I'm thinking of something like cities could designate specific routes and lanes for L4 cars with designated drop-off locations and also only allow the service to be operational during clement weather conditions. It seems it would be beneficial to have fully automated routes to and from specific spots even today, for example an airport to a downtown location, for many cities to help reduce transportation costs and safety issues as compared with Uber/Lyft.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#158

Post by panick21 »

ffggvv wrote: post #133
sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

if they don’t have fsd then they are just an electric car company. if they are just a car company their stock should be at 50 dollars right now. hence why he’d never admit it and instead will double down with his robot that will never materialize

Nonsense. Go look at some of the models by different analyst. Even if you include no software revenue at all, you can justify a much higher stock price then you suggest. Some never include anything for FSD in the first place.

And even if they don't reach FSD, they could still generate a lot of software revenue from Autopilot features.

And beyond that Tesla still does more then final assembly of EV and selling them to dealerships.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#159

Post by crznp »

tshaddox wrote: post #76
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…

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.

Expanding the geographic range for Waymo is straightforward: do the same thing in a new place (plus new hurdles like snow, but that isn't currently the limitation to growth).

It isn't clear how Tesla goes from "FSD" to "full automation". They are working on the "draw the rest of the owl" step.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#160

Post by Lammy »

jcranmer wrote: post #141
Lammy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SF is a real nightmare to drive. 'cause they decided not to build most of the roads: https://www.cahighways.org/maps/1955trafficways.jpg

Cities that did decide to tear up urban areas for freeways aren't really any better. Consider places like Los Angeles, Dallas, or Houston. What makes SF difficult to drive in (from my perspective of only ever being a pedestrian there) is a) extremely hilly terrain, b) the general difficulty of a dense urban environment anywhere , and only a distant third is c) traffic, which is merely an added stressor to the complex…

> extremely hilly terrain

Yes, I agree, but they decided it was better to go over every hill instead of through them: https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4182283392/

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