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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

#681

Post by s1artibartfast »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #676
s1artibartfast wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, your 2nd paper puts the cost of a traditional taxi at $3.50 per mile. At the low end of the autonomous price range, it is still a half price taxi. For the autonomous taxi calculation they also include a 250k medallion plus interest paid off over 5 years, but don't include this for regular taxis. They also include a 200K/year to supervise the auto taxi for the high end ($6/mile). With all that said, Auto taxi…

This is a great reply. You are right: Too much analysis is focused on the suburban car commuter. More analysis should focus on urbanites looking for a "human" taxi that will be more expensive than an equivalent robot taxi! Personally, I still think the future of taxi drivers is they become the maintenance workers for robot taxis at the same wages...

Thanks! It's always nice to get some feedback after putting thought into a post.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#682

Post by pavon »

mchusma wrote: post #563
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?

I think almost no commercial value is at 4. I'm fact, it could be negative value. Because you need the expense of a "digital driver" and the expense of a human driver. It's basically level 5 or bust.

Current California regulations for remote operators are identical regardless of whether the car is considered SAE level 4 or 5. I'm not sure what constitutes "continuous monitoring" there (I could interpret that as anything between eyes on road at all times down to positive SOH messages arrived).

Apart from regulations, level 4 doesn't require a remote operator monitoring at all times. It just requires them to be available when the car recognizes it can't handle the situation. Depending on how frequently interventions are needed, that could mean a remote operator for every car, or one for every 10 thousand.

The important part about Level 4 is that the car recognizes its own limits and doesn't act outside of them. How practical those limits are is completely undefined by SAE. Level 4 is a continuum whose limit is level 5. We will definitely be seeing practical commercial value as we approach level 5 but haven't yet gotten there.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#683

Post by pavon »

arduinomancer wrote: post #397
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?

How is there commercial value if you still need a driver in the car?

You don't need a driver in the car for level 4. That is level 3 and below.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#684

Post by minhazm »

alphabetting wrote: post #251
minhazm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google took a completely different approach and relies heavily on pre-mapped environments. Tesla has several orders of magnitude more vehicles, more data, and a more diverse set of data given their cars are in many different countries. It's not implausible to think that Tesla could arrive at FSD faster than Google.

I'd contend Waymo has more data but data isn't really the hurdle. It's AI/ML and simulation needed to get the final 1% right. Good thread on ground Tesla would need to make up to catch AV leaders here. https://twitter.com/Christiano92/status/1428671634131628033

I can't see how you can content Waymo has more data, they had around 600 cars on the road last year. Sure they have some more sensors but Waymo only operates in select cities and select routes, the diversity of the data is very limited. They won't have seen scenario's like a snow storm for example since they've only been testing in CA and AZ. Meanwhile Tesla has a robust framework for collecting clips of specific scenario's as needed by shipping a small model to roughly match the scenario.

Simulation is important for sure, and Tesla even talked about that as much. But you can only simulate the scenario's that you've thought of, it can't replace real world data, which again Tesla has several orders of magnitude more of than Waymo.

As for the comments about Dojo I think they're unfounded. Tesla has already proven that they can create their own custom chip and have shipped it to hundreds of thousands of cars. I don't see any reason to think they can't get the system running in the next year or so. But even if they can't do that in time they still have NVIDIA to fall back on. Elon even said in the talk that maybe it might not work out, and if that's the case they can always buy a solution.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#685

Post by pbreit »

vidarh wrote: post #647
ra7 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point of this comment chain. They don't have to make it work everywhere in the contiguous United States to have a useful product. The (robo)taxi market is concentrated in big metro areas and that's what their focus is.

The thing is, with apps providing start and end point, they don't even need to be able to handle a full city to get a benefit. They can geofence really aggressively, and the moment they can ditch the safety drivers from a sufficient subset of journeys based on routes requested, they have an advantage.

They can cherry-pick the easiest routes. Discussing the entire "contiguous USA" is pointless.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#686

Post by pbreit »

mbesto wrote: post #622
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?

> Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. There are two markets: - Level 4 driverless taxis (~$500B market) - Level 5 driverless cars for every human being (~$10T+ market) So, most of the commercial value for Uber, Lyft, etc. is from L4, but L5 is where the most overall economic value is. But L4 has to be achieved in all locations, otherwise that TAM is highly variable.

What does L5 get you that L4 does not (commercially)?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#687

Post by CoryG89 »

newsclues wrote: post #663
CoryG89 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a human see a clear path and kill someone or not?

So I’ve encountered this in real life. The human driver detects the pedestrian, laughs at the fall, then get worried and wait for them to get up, because a human knows someone fell and didn’t magically disappear.

Doesn't seem like it would require AGI for a self driving system to "know" that someone fell and didn't magically disappear.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#688

Post by vidarh »

pbreit wrote: post #685
vidarh wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, with apps providing start and end point, they don't even need to be able to handle a full city to get a benefit. They can geofence really aggressively, and the moment they can ditch the safety drivers from a sufficient subset of journeys based on routes requested, they have an advantage.

They can cherry-pick the easiest routes. Discussing the entire "contiguous USA" is pointless.

Exactly. They can outright ignore really hard markets,. and be present in markets that have a decent percentage of routes they can handle and fall back to dispatching regular cars on routes their full automation can't handle.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#689

Post by burnished »

adrianN wrote: post #635
burnished wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of driving well requires a diverse of array of abilities, right? You know what is litter and what is debris because you can make a guess about material properties based on some observations, like looking at something that moves without being touched and is translucent, you probably conclude that its a plastic bag of some sort and not a hazard. Similarly you probably use a wealth of experience to judge that a sma…

"Making roads more suitable for self-driving vehicles" will make roads much worse for pedestrians and cyclists if you're not very careful.

Yes, this is very important to keep in mind, thank you. I wonder what sort of things one could do to make roads easier for automation and still serve regular people trying to be outside.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#690

Post by machinelearning »

rpmisms wrote: post #667
machinelearning wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're referring to is overall coverage not robustness. In fact, placing your car somewhere you've never been before and operate it seems less robust than one that already has HD maps.

ro·bust | rōˈbəst, ˈrōˌbəst | adjective (robuster, robustest) • (of a process, system, organization, etc.) able to withstand or overcome adverse conditions: California's robust property market.

You think this is clever, but you actually come across as though you have no clue what you're talking about. We are operating under the same definition of robustness, can't believe that your first reaction is to act like I don't understand what robustness means.

You on the other hand, have no explanation whatsoever as to why you think a non-HD map system is robust everywhere compared to a HD map system. If you claim that HD maps are less robust by definition, you clearly do not understand deep learning or computer vision.

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