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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

#191

Post by snarf21 »

thesausageking wrote: post #138
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…

Level 4 is where most of value is. If a system could drive in all cities and highways, that's more than 90% of benefit.

Agreed 100%. There will be special exit/on ramps built along highways and the trucks will largely just stay in their lane even if slower. It would cut the number of truckers needed by probably 50+%.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#192

Post by pfarrell »

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…

For SF, not rebuilding the 480 after the '89 earthquake made the Bay side of San Francisco really pleasant and enjoyable place to be. The Embarcadero from Giant's stadium to the Wharf and around to Fort Mason is such a beautiful place to walk/jog/ride, I can't imagine the area with the double-decker highway it used to have.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#193

Post by pbreit »

pvarangot wrote: post #129
pbreit wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

AFAIK no one recently claimed level 4 with a safety driver was decades away, and I was working on self driving until a few months ago so I was kinda "plugged" into the news. A handful of serious companies have plans and funding to deploy L4 taxi fleets or L4 features to consumer cars in 4/5 years. There's no commercial value at L4 whatsoever if you still pay a safety driver. It's usually even more expensive per hour…

Don't have to pay safety drivers with L4.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#194

Post by marcellus23 »

pbreit wrote: post #188
afavour wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking? What is the "this" you're talking about here? I don't think there were many skeptics out there saying that it'll be decades before a taxi service will be able to launch a small, manned trial in a single municipality. Given that it's manned it still isn't quite at Level 4. The cynicism (and I'd consider myself a mild cynic I guess) was an…

This is the 2nd market and the other is unmanned.

Okay... let me know when their market is the contiguous United States.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#195

Post by Lammy »

pfarrell wrote: post #184
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

There's a second Oakland/SF bridge that doesn't exist. Well, I assume it would go to Oakland. It's marked with "???" and just says "Crossing". I presume that hypothetical bridge wouldn't have Yerba Buena Island to connect through, so would be really impressive and long (compared to the Golden Gate and Bay bridges).

That's the "Southern Crossing"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Crossing_(California)

It would have probably been the continuation of I-980 had that bridge been built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_980#History

At one point it was also planned to be just north of SFO. Have you ever taken I-380 east instead of one of the exits to 101N/S? There's a huge multi-lane road that dwindles to basically an airport access road exit.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#197

Post by VelkaMorava »

hammock wrote: post #148
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…

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#198

Post by rosetremiere »

purple_ferret wrote: post #105
rpmisms wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people in the Tesla camp (like George Hotz) believe Waymo is destined to fail.

Why is that? and what are the two approaches?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#199

Post by bayesianbot »

tazjin wrote: post #113
ra7 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Finland we had a law that required the taxi monopoly to provide services even in rural areas, so disabled and elderly people could get transportation to services they need. Worked well in my town of 7 000 people except sometimes on weeknights the only driver could be in the next city 50km away.

(Had, as in they changed the law few years back. Not sure how it's now)

Robotaxi(s) could be quite good solution to the problem - the drivers were often pissed if you called them for a single ride when they were home or far away.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#200

Post by rpmisms »

purple_ferret wrote: post #105
rpmisms wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people in the Tesla camp (like George Hotz) believe Waymo is destined to fail.

I think Tesla is taking the correct approach, treating it as an AGI problem, and training their system to be antifragile.

I think Waymo will make money off of their system sooner.

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